As a 501(c)(3) focused on early detection and caregiver training, Early Kidney Detection Foundation (EKDF) sits in a strange place in the health system.
On one side, we hear strong national messages about health equity, kidney justice, and prevention.
On the other, we are still scrambling for basic, sustainable funding to deliver the very prevention work everyone claims to prioritize.
The story of HR 5027, combined with the roles of political insiders like Dana Williamson and national health leaders like Xavier Becerra, highlights that gap in a way we can’t ignore.
This isn’t about parties or campaigns. It’s about how power and resources move—and how little of that movement reaches prevention-focused organizations on the ground.
The Promise: A National Push on Kidney Equity
When Xavier Becerra became Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), kidney and patient groups publicly welcomed his confirmation and talked openly about new opportunities to tackle kidney disease and health disparities.
Becerra’s public record is full of language about:
- Health justice and equity
- Expanding access to care
- Ensuring communities don’t go bankrupt from health costs
At the same time, national kidney coalitions were pushing H.R. 5027—the Chronic Kidney Disease Improvement in Research and Treatment Act of 2023—as a major step to:
- Add kidney screening to the Medicare annual wellness visit
- Expand the Medicare Kidney Disease Education (KDE) benefit
- Improve payment pathways for innovative kidney therapies
- Strengthen financial protection and access to Medigap for ESRD patients
On paper, this aligned perfectly with what EKDF does every day:
early detection, education, and prevention-focused support in communities that are usually described as “hard to reach” but are, in reality, simply under-resourced.
The Reality: HR 5027 Stalled — and Prevention Funding Never Landed
When we went to Washington, D.C., for the American Kidney Fund summit on HR 5027, we went in good faith:
- We had an itinerary showing meetings with congressional leaders.
- We prepared community-level data and lived experience from California’s most impacted communities.
- We showed up as a Black-led, prevention-focused nonprofit ready to partner and execute.
The outcome was blunt:
- Only one leader made time—and mainly for a photo op.
- The rest of our scheduled meetings were shifted to aides who had limited knowledge of HR 5027 or the realities of CKD in low-income and Black and Brown communities.
Parallel to that, the bill itself never moved:
- H.R. 5027 was introduced in July 2023.
- It was referred to committees and then to the Subcommittee on Health.
- It died in committee and was never enacted into law.
That means:
- No new statutory requirement for CKD screening under Medicare beyond existing rules.
- No legislated expansion of the KDE benefit as laid out in the bill.
- No dedicated federal prevention funding stream flowing down to organizations like EKDF.
In other words, the rhetoric made it to the podium; the resources never made it to the communities.
Meanwhile in California: Insiders, Campaign Money, and “Access”
While prevention work like ours remains underfunded, recent reporting has pulled back the curtain on how political power and money move at the top.
Public articles describe:
- Dana Williamson is a long-time Sacramento political strategist and former chief of staff to Governor Gavin Newsom, deeply embedded in California’s decision-making networks.
- Federal indictments alleging that Williamson and others conspired to embezzle funds from a dormant campaign account tied to Xavier Becerra’s past political activity, using false invoices and funneling campaign money for personal benefit.
Becerra himself is not accused of wrongdoing and has reportedly cooperated with investigators.
From EKDF’s vantage point, the point is not the legal case—that will play out in court. The point is what it reveals about priorities and systems:
- There is time, expertise, and infrastructure to move hundreds of thousands of dollars around within political and campaign structures.
- There is no comparable urgency or infrastructure to move stable funding into community prevention and early detection work for kidney disease.
When political insiders have more structured support to move money inside campaigns than community health organizations have to screen patients, something is fundamentally off.
The Becerra “Equity” Vision vs. Ground-Level Execution
It’s important to be precise here.
Xavier Becerra’s public record at HHS is full of strong language about:
- Making health a right, not a privilege
- Driving health equity through federal policy and programs
- Supporting vulnerable communities and tackling disparities
Kidney organizations welcomed his confirmation and spoke openly about the opportunity to advance kidney policy and innovation under his leadership.
But at the end of the day, EKDF’s operating reality looks like this:
- HR 5027, which directly aligned with early detection, education, and innovation, never got over the finish line.
- Federal kidney prevention funding remains fragmented and modest, with initiatives like the CDC’s CKD programs routinely described as under-resourced for the scale of the problem.
- Community-based, prevention-focused organizations—especially small, Black-led nonprofits—are still hustling for small grants, short-term contracts, and one-off partnerships, instead of being treated as core infrastructure.
So we have a system where:
- The language of equity is strong at the top.
- The execution of equity is weak at the bottom.
That misalignment is exactly what EKDF is naming.
Where EKDF Stands in This Landscape
EKDF is not a lobbying shop. We’re not a political consulting firm. We are a prevention and education organization that:
- Delivers early kidney detection to communities that typically get screened late, if at all.
- Trains caregivers and non-medical workers who are actually in the homes, close to the patients.
- Works at the intersection of kidney health, environmental exposure, and chronic disease in communities living with structural inequities.
Our ask is simple and operational:
- If national leaders say prevention and equity are priorities, then fund prevention and equity at the community level.
- If bills like HR 5027 are written to elevate screening and education, then move them—or build the same outcomes through other enforceable mechanisms.
- If political systems can move large sums around at the campaign level, they can also design durable funding pipelines for community-based kidney prevention work.
We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for alignment:
- Between what’s said in speeches and what shows up in community budgets
- Between national kidney policy goals and the actual organizations positioned to implement them
- Between the equity brand and equity in practice
Compliance Note: How EKDF Engages on Policy as a 501(c)(3)
As a 501(c)(3) public charity, EKDF:
- Does not endorse or oppose any candidate for office.
- Does not participate in political campaigns.
- Engages in issue-based advocacy focused on kidney health, prevention, and caregiver support.
Mentioning public figures like Xavier Becerra or Dana Williamson here is not about campaigning. It is about:
- Referencing publicly reported facts to explain how decisions, money, and access move in the health and political ecosystem.
- Highlighting the structural gap between top-level equity messaging and on-the-ground prevention funding.
We will continue to show up in policy spaces, participate in issue-focused coalitions, and provide our expertise on early detection and caregiver training—without crossing into campaign activity.
The Bottom Line
From EKDF’s perspective, the story is straightforward:
- HR 5027 was designed to support prevention, screening, and innovation in kidney care. It stalled.
- National leaders talk convincingly about health equity, but the resource flow into prevention-focused community work remains thin.
- Political insiders and campaign networks are still better organized to move money than the health system is to move prevention into the neighborhoods where kidney disease is taking lives.
We’re not here to manage optics.
We’re here to detect earlier, educate better, and support caregivers and patients who don’t have time for political theater.
If you are a policymaker, funder, or health-system leader who is serious about kidney equity, EKDF is ready to collaborate on one simple condition:
Let’s move from talking about equity to actually resourcing it—at the level where lives are saved or lost.