PDI is proud of the results we have delivered to our clients. Many of our efforts have had an immediate, measurable impact on legislation and regulation. Others, such as securing public witness testimony and organizing breakfast briefings for Hill staffers, are difficult to quantify, but the exposure they generate lays the groundwork for future campaigns.

Here are some of our successes.

Working with Congress

• Helped enact legislation in partnership with our client that modified the Controlled Substances Act to allow physician-office prescribing of certain opiate addiction pharmaceutical treatments.
• Successfully amended key statute to improve the climate for medical research.
• Drafted and helped pass a new law that struck a compromise between our client, a pharmaceutical company, and the law enforcement community. This legislation resulted in stiff penalties for the illegal use or possession of a particular drug ingredient while allowing our client to continue important research on the therapeutic uses for this ingredient. With our assistance and advice, our client's new drug product is in the process of earning FDA approval.
• Worked with House and Senate Committee-level staff to draft effective policy and to help garner support for the "Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act."
• Worked with Congress to enact a law requiring states to evaluate competitive bids in a manner that did not unfairly discriminate against our client's products.
• Led a successful effort to persuade Congress to defeat a proposal by our client's competitor that would have disadvantaged our client in the bidding process for large government contracts.
• Lobbied Congress to put pressure on FDA to remove illegal and unapproved medical devices from the market.
• Drafted appropriations language to preclude a final rule from being issued that would adversely affect our client.
• Successfully stopped onerous regulatory proposal through legislation.

Working with federal agencies

• Successfully achieved FDA advisory committee support for a product that had originally been voted down.
• Interceded on behalf of a client with FDA when the agency failed to provide final approval for our client's product because it had granted orphan drug status for a similar product developed by another company. Our client's product was approved in a timely manner.

• Successfully lobbied Congress to secure a $20-million, four-year pilot program beneficial to our client's product development.
• Secured a 10%-plus increase in program funding and administrative flexibility to ensure agency approval of our client's member-company products.
• Secured language in pending legislation that assured our client's member companies would benefit from a government-funded alternative fuels development program.
• Secured funds for various nutrition and medical research programs.
• Secured funds for development of a nanotechnology center.

Building coalitions

• Created a coalition of six leading biotechnology firms to promote legislation advantageous to our client and meet with agency officials to prevent onerous rulemaking.
• Wrote industry-coalition draft of legislative authority for a regulatory agency. Our language was included in the final bill.
• Created and led coalition of universities, research institutions, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to lobby Congress to stop a federal agency from costly and ineffective rulemaking.
• Led a broad industry coalition that successfully stopped several negative amendments to agriculture/FDA appropriations bills.

Raising awareness

• Secured public witness testimony slot before the House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee.
• Helped attract high-profile guests for a non-profit client's fundraising gala. Guests attending included the NASA Administrator, NSF Director, several NIH institute directors, an FDA acting Commissioner, and key Senate and House staff members.
• Organized breakfast briefing sessions for members of Congress and their staff resulting in collaborative efforts to insert client-drafted bill language relevant to the client's interest.
• Contributed articles to clients' internal newsletters, explaining the importance of key legislative issues and their impact on the client's employees.
• Helped implement a Web-based system for constituents to send letters to Congress, resulting in thousands of additional letters to Congress.
• Drafted an opinion editorial on a controversial research issue, which was subsequently printed in a regional paper.