Ballard Partners is launching a new Western Hemisphere Affairs Practice and a dedicated Venezuela Working Group, positioning the firm to provide comprehensive strategic advocacy and advisory services throughout the hemisphere.

The new practice will focus on issues spanning Latin America, Mexico, Canada and Greenland, while the Venezuela Working Group will concentrate on the increasingly complex landscape surrounding U.S.-Venezuela relations, including sanctions policy, diplomacy and cross-border commercial activity.

“The geopolitical and economic integration of the Western Hemisphere has never been more vital to U.S. national interests,” said firm founder and President Brian Ballard.

“By formalizing this practice group and the Venezuela Working Group, we are ensuring our clients have access to the deep regional expertise and bipartisan institutional knowledge required to succeed in these critical markets. 2026 marks a transformative year for hemispheric policy, and Ballard Partners is uniquely positioned to lead at this frontier.”

The practice brings together former senior officials from the White House National Security Council, the State Department, Congress and Capitol Hill leadership offices. The team is expected to advise clients on international trade, diplomatic engagement and regulatory matters, with particular emphasis on energy, infrastructure and critical minerals.

The roster includes Micah Ketchel, a former senior adviser at the National Security Council and the State Department, and Tracie Pough, who spent nearly two decades as Chief of Staff to U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and has long-standing ties to policymakers on Latin America and Caribbean issues.

The group also includes Tucker Knott, a former Chief of Staff to U.S. Sen. Ted Budd, and Thomas Boodry, who served in senior legislative roles at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

Florida-based expertise is represented by Jose Felix Diaz, a former state legislator and lawyer who has played a role in Ballard Partners’ expansion into Latin American markets, and Scott Wagner, a lawyer with extensive experience advising on large-scale infrastructure and energy projects throughout the region.

Ballard Partners said the creation of the Western Hemisphere Affairs Practice and Venezuela Working Group builds on its global expansion strategy, adding to an existing footprint that spans major U.S. and global markets.

As Florida lawmakers convene for the 2026 Legislative Session, health care advocates are calling on state leaders to prioritize access to and affordability of health care.

Advocates from across Florida gathered virtually last week to highlight mounting pressure on families, particularly children, as federal health policy changes take effect. The expiration of enhanced federal premium tax credits and the passage of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act are projected to result in more than 10 million people nationwide losing coverage over the next decade.

In Florida alone, an estimated more than 1.5 million residents could lose insurance or face significantly higher premiums.

The situation is compounded by ongoing delays in implementing the state’s KidCare expansion and by Florida’s refusal to expand Medicaid, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents in what is commonly known as the Medicaid coverage gap.

Among the proposals Florida Voices For Health wants lawmakers to consider this Session are SB 1222, which would provide consumer protections related to medical debt; HB 1043, aimed at addressing shortages in the doula workforce; and HB 1091 and SB 1136, which focus on improving children’s oral health through better coordination between schools and families.

They are also urging lawmakers to strengthen Florida’s Medicaid program and press forward with the KidCare expansion. In 2023, the Governor signed a bill championed by then-House Speaker Paul Renner that expanded eligibility for KidCare — the state’s version of the federal children’s health insurance program — by allowing families that earn up to 300% of the federal poverty level to qualify. The prior threshold was 200%.

However, implementation has stalled amid an ongoing lawsuit over a federal stipulation requiring states to comply with a 12-month continuous eligibility requirement, even if they miss monthly premiums. The rule applies to all states, but Florida was the only one to challenge it.

While state leaders say the federal requirement is too costly and restrictive, the legal fight has effectively frozen a policy that lawmakers from both parties supported and subsequently left families who would otherwise qualify in limbo.

“The expiring subsidies and this failure to implement KidCare expansion are really a double whammy for children in Florida,” said Joan Alker, Executive Director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University. “It’s critically important for families’ economic security and access to care to have insurance — and for children, having short gaps in coverage is problematic.”

Florida Health Justice Project Policy Director Melanie Williams said the upcoming Session is pivotal and, if lawmakers act, could “be remembered as a turning point: when Florida chose to protect families, support healthy births and childhoods, and build a stronger, more equitable future for our state.”

It’s unclear whether the bills supported by Florida Voices for Health will gain traction, though the dental screenings measure starts Session with cross-party support, with Republican Sen. Alexis Calatayud and Democratic Rep. Kelly Skidmore sponsoring SB 1136 and HB 1091, respectively.

The measure would allow schools to conduct visual dental screenings — without diagnosing or treating oral conditions — as part of an existing preventive program, after parents receive written notice and an opportunity to opt their children out.

“We want to make sure, in our continued collaborative discussions on supporting parents’ rights, that we’re working with Democrats to empower parents with this information and provide next-step opportunities, especially for lower-income families that may not have access to regular dentist visits,” Calatayud told Florida Politics ahead of Session.

“We’re explicitly allowing and creating an opt-out provision if parents don’t want it, but this is an important public health opportunity to give kids of all socioeconomic backgrounds equal access to dental hygiene.”

Calatayud and Skidmore filed their bills last week, and they were assigned Committee references on Monday. SB 1222’s first stop is the Senate PreK-12 Education Committee; HB 1091’s is the Student Academic Success Subcommittee.

Miami Democratic Rep. Ashley Gantt is sponsoring HB 1043 to establish the Doula Workforce Development Support Program. The program, which would be housed at FloridaCommerce, aims to reverse the state’s rising maternal mortality and morbidity rates by providing grants to existing doula training organizations so they can expand, particularly in “rural maternity-care deserts” and urban counties with high maternal morbidity disparities.

The trend disproportionately affects Black women and is not unique to Florida. Nationally, maternal mortality — the death of a woman during pregnancy, childbirth, or up to a year after delivery — rates are two to three times higher among Black women than White women.

Additionally, AHCA data on Medicaid births shows a significant racial disparity for neonatal deaths and live infant deaths, with a 2024 report noting that in nearly half of neonatal deaths and live infant deaths, the mother was Black; Black women accounted for about a third of overall births in the dataset.

HB 1043’s first stop is the Health Professions & Programs Subcommittee. Democratic Sen. Rosalind Osgood is sponsoring a similar, but not identical, bill.

Meanwhile, Doral Republican Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez is sponsoring SB 1222, which aims to curb aggressive debt-collection practices against patients who incur medical debt, particularly while eligibility for financial assistance is still being determined. In those instances, the bill prohibits medical debt creditors and collectors from using or threatening to use actions such as property liens, arrests, lawsuits, or reporting the debt to consumer reporting agencies. It has been referred to the Health Policy, Banking and Insurance and Rules committees.

Taken together, Florida Voices for Health says its preferred legislation would significantly address the health care access and affordability crises.

“When we talk about doing things that would affect the ACA, would affect Medicaid, would affect county funding — it affects the patients that I’m going to see tomorrow. This last-ditch idea of ‘If all else fails, they can go to the ER’ does a disservice to residents in Florida,” said Dr. David Woolsey, an emergency medicine doctor at Jackson Health System and the Vice President of SEIU Local 1991.