EMS in Office: Meet Two Medics Headed to Statehouses

Although the hotly contested presidential race dominated the election news cycle in 2020, there were lot of other people elected to office in November—including two EMS professionals to state-level legislative seats. Here’s a look at both of them, including why they ran and what they hope to accomplish. 

Dacia Grayber, Oregon

Grayber is a unionized firefighter/paramedic with Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue in suburban Portland. In her first run at elected office, she won the District 35 seat in the State House of Representatives for the Democratic Party. This seat has been held since 2010 by Democrat Margaret Doherty, who retired.

Grayber’s win was impressive: She took 67.6% of the vote, while Republican opponent Bob Niemeyer got 32.2%. (The other 0.2% went to write-in candidates.)

Grayber’s win is all the more noteworthy because she’s a full-time paramedic who never planned to go into politics but was persuaded to do by her personal work experiences.

“Through the years I’ve seen some of our most vulnerable populations and had frontline experience with everything from the impact of difficult access to healthcare to gun violence and addictions,” Grayber says.

This exposure motivated Grayber to champion healthcare issues as a community activist. “The more I got involved in testifying for different bills and things, the more I saw how important it was to be able to translate my frontline experience into policy,” she says. Still, it took the retirement of Doherty—whom Grayber had lobbied many times on healthcare issues—to motivate this paramedic to run.

“Rep. Doherty came out to the ‘Women in the Fire Trades Day’ we do for young girls,” recalls Grayber, “and she said, ‘I think you should consider running for office. You’d be really good at this.’ I kind of laughed it off because I’m a firefighter, I’m a paramedic. This is not what we do.”

An interest in improving community healthcare spurred Grayber into running for office, but it is COVID-19 that is now on the top of her agenda.

“I have a lot of aspirational bills I’d like to see happen, but right now we are in a public health emergency, and it’s going to be all hands on deck, regardless of which side of the aisle you fall on,” Grayber says. “Republican or Democrat, we need to make sure people have access to healthcare and stable housing—so that they’re not being evicted as we go into winter here—and that we have a plan for economic recovery. I really see myself as a team player in making that happen.”

At the same time, since an Oregon state representative is only a part-time job (one six-month “long” session and a one-month “short” session each year), Grayber plans to remain a paramedic if she can.

“For the long session I was hoping to still work part-time on weekends, but that’s probably not going to be a possibility with my employer, so I will take a leave of absence for six months and then come back,” she says. “And then for the short session, I’ll use my vacation accruals and trades.

“I feel like this is a pretty incredible opportunity to be able to bring a unique voice to the legislature,” she adds.

Suzanne Prentiss, New Hampshire

Having served as an EMT, paramedic, and EMS educator, Suzanne Prentiss spent a decade as the first female chief of EMS in New Hampshire, where she played a key role in the state’s response to SARS and H1N1. Now she’s headed to the state senate as its representative from District 5.

“I knew rolling out the flu vaccine annually could be done more rapidly if more people were able to administer the vaccine,” Prentiss says on her website, www.prentissfornhsenate.com. “I went to work—bringing together nurses, labor, and hospital organizations—to develop protocols and training that allowed paramedics to join the ranks of those who could deliver vaccines.”           

After retiring as the state’s EMS chief, Prentiss was manager of emergency medical services at the state’s Concord Hospital. She is currently executive director of the American Trauma Society, which supports trauma centers nationwide.

In the midst of all this activity, Prentiss found time to serve on the city council and as mayor of Lebanon, N.H., where her husband worked as a unionized firefighter. It was in her role as mayor that she met Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

“Here’s a man who was running for president, and he said to me, ‘Are you using community paramedics?’” she recalls. “He knew what they were because Pete had been a mayor. He’d been on the ground.”

Prentiss eventually became cochair of Buttigieg’s New Hampshire presidential campaign—an experience that rekindled her passion for public service. “The pandemic and the retiring of the state senator for this district (Martha Hennessey) proved to me it was time to put my experience to work, so I ran for office,” she says.

Like Grayber’s win, Prentiss’ victory was comfortable: She won 66.5% of the vote versus Republican candidate Timothy O’Hearne’s 33.5%.

In this time of COVID-19, Prentiss’ call to strengthen New Hampshire’s public health networks to be able to “rapidly deploy a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available” (from her website) struck a chord with voters. So did her support for full access to quality healthcare by all state residents and economic support during the postpandemic recovery.

Prentiss’ vocation as an EMS professional also mattered to voters, and she made sure they knew about it whenever she met with them. “I started every conversation by telling people I was a paramedic,” she says. “At a time like this, it makes sense to put someone into the state legislature who has actually worked in crisis management and lived through such uncertain conditions.”

Today Prentiss is looking forward to making a difference in the New Hampshire state senate—and she encourages other EMTs and paramedics to do the same.

“I think it’s important for our profession to start making a change,” she says. Don’t do it for the money—in New Hampshire state senators don’t even get paid. “But we do get reimbursed for our travel expenses,” Prentiss quips.

James Careless is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to EMS World.