Announcement: Informed Policy Advocates works with Senator Ben Allen in submitting a formal letter to the CDPH.

Informed Policy Advocates is writing to share important developments in the ongoing work to advance informed consent, medical consumer protections, and civil rights in California.

As many of you know, Informed Policy Advocates regularly shares updates on our progress and mission. For strategic and practical reasons, however, we do not disclose every step of our work as it unfolds. Much of the most meaningful advocacy happens behind closed doors, through sustained relationship-building, policy analysis, and direct engagement with lawmakers long before outcomes become public.

Over the past year, IPA has been actively lobbying and working with a number of legislators on issues related to school medical exemption policies and their real-world impacts on families. As part of that work, late last summer, IPA leadership (Darrlene Alquiza, Jessica Cabrera, and Kris Dukes) along with our lobbyists from Sheehy Strategy Group, met directly with Senator Ben Allen in his district office. During that meeting, we presented our data, research, and exhibits outlining serious concerns with California’s current medical exemption framework for schools.

Based on those discussions, we recommended that Senator Allen formally engage the California Department of Public Health. At his request, Informed Policy Advocates helped his office draft a letter addressing these concerns.

Throughout the fall, our team remained in close communication with Senator and his staff, engaging in multiple rounds of review and refinement to ensure the letter accurately reflected the policy issues and supporting evidence. In early December, Darrlene and Kris met again with Senator at a public event to further discuss the substance of the letter. Following those conversations, the Senator and our lobbyist finalized the content to be sent, and we are pleased to see the letter formally transmitted to CDPH on January 27th, 2026.

We are grateful to Senator Allen for his engagement and leadership, and we deeply appreciate our supporters, stakeholders, and the families affected by these policies who continue to trust us with this work.

At Informed Policy Advocates, credibility matters. We are committed to advancing this work with integrity and professionalism, and we take care to accurately represent both our role and the roles of others in this shared effort to affect policy change. We would never mislead or claim credit for work that is not ours, and it is unfortunate that, in this instance, others did not uphold this standard, causing the public record to be blurred. Nevertheless, our focus remains on delivering results and advancing meaningful policy change.

We celebrate this accomplishment, and we look forward to continuing this work and wish all those engaged in improving California’s policies success as we move forward.

With gratitude,

Informed Policy Advocates Co-founders

Darrlene Alquiza, Jessica Cabrera, Kris Dukes