Congresswoman Lauren Underwood in Conversation
U.S. Congresswoman Lauren Underwood discusses healthcare access, democratic representation, and what it means to serve as a young Black woman in today's Congress.
Why we picked this
Underwood brought something unusual to the Affordable Care Act fight: she was a registered nurse before she was a congresswoman, which is precisely the background the healthcare debate has always lacked.
Lauren Underwood won Illinois’s 14th congressional district in 2018 at 32, becoming the youngest Black woman elected to Congress at the time and the first woman and first Black person to represent the district. Before running for office, she worked as a registered nurse and served as a senior advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services — a background that shaped her focus on healthcare access in ways that most lawmakers’ résumés simply don’t.
This appearance at the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Northwestern Day is part of the Joanne H. Alter Women in Government Lecture series, which brings elected and appointed officials into conversation with the public about the actual mechanics of governance and the pressures that shape political decisions. Underwood’s particular vantage — a healthcare professional in a legislative body that routinely makes healthcare decisions without clinical knowledge — is one worth hearing.
The conversation will address healthcare access, the experience of serving in a highly polarized House, and what democratic representation looks like in practice.