After US President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign on Sunday, he and other senior democratic politicians have given their support for Vice President Kamala Harris. Although the situation could change until the official selection of the democratic presidential candidate in August, it is generally expected to measure itself in November with the former President Donald Trump.

Here Nature speaks to political analysts and researchers about what a possible Harris government could mean for science, health and the environment.

a background to science and justice

Health and Science has been accompanying Harris since early age: Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who names Harris as a significant influence, was a leading breast cancer researcher who died of cancer.

Much of Harris' career was about criminal justice-she was the prosecutor of the district in San Francisco for seven years and then the Attorney General of California for six years until she was elected to the state in 2017.

As a senator, Harris was a co-initiator of efforts to the diversity of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) workforce to improve . It brought legislation to promote students from underrepresented population groups so that they can get jobs and professional experience in StEM areas. As a candidate in the race for democratic presidential nomination in 2020, she proposed to invest $ 60 billion to finance historically black universities and strengthen black companies.

As Vice President, Harris has headed the National Space Council, which is commissioned to advise the president on the president on US world -dream policy and strategy. Under Harris' leadership, the committee focused on international cooperation, for example at Artemis mission that aims to send astronauts to the moon.

It is still unclear who Harris will choose to run at your side if she gets the party's nomination. A possible candidate is Mark Kelly, a senator from Arizona and Former astronaut , which would enrich the position with his decades of experience in science and technology.

healthcare and drug prices

During the Democratic Precision Campaign in 2020, Harris was further left as bidges on health policy issues. On the one hand, she supported a universal deposit system for national health insurance-which was still a role for private insurance companies-while Biden preferred the existing system that he had shaped as Vice President.

It is still unknown whether she will support such progressive health policies or will choose a way that could be more attractive for independent and centric voters, says Alina Salganicoff, director of women and health at the health policy research organization KFF based in San Francisco, California. "I assume that she will be a eager defender of the preservation and support of the Affordable Care Act, which was also a focus of the bidet campaign," she says.

The bid-harris administration has also made drug prices an important priority by determining an upper limit for the price of insulin and supporting the use of 'intervention rights' in which the government could intervene in order to determine the price of innovations that were created by public funds. In 2019, Harri's co -initiator of a law that would have created an independent agency for determining reasonable drug prices.

Peter Maybarduk, director of the program for access to medication at the public citizen's representative representative, based in Washington DC, praised these measures and hoped that they would continue under a possible Harris government. "The Biden-Harris government has so far been the strongest in the fight against outrageous pharmaceutical prices and has brought the country on a long way to the pharmaceutical personality," he says.

women's health

Harris has spoken out more than bidges for abortion rights. Last December she started a national tour for reproductive freedoms, in which she was the first US Vice President to attend an abortion counseling center.

This was an essential topic for voters in the United States, whereby 63% of the population believed that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, as from a Survey of the PEW Research Center in Washington DC. The support for abortion rights after you through the Decision Dobbs against the Jackson Women’s Health Organization 2022 were severely restricted, important democratic successes in the past year. "The fact that she is willing to talk about it will be enormous, because this is a winning topic for the Democrats," says Melissa Murray, expert for reproductive rights at New York University in New York City. "It is an important difference between the two parties, and the person who can make this case the clearest in front of the American audience will be in a stronger position."

Harriss approach to reproductive justice is not only limited to access to contraceptives and abortion, Murray states. The vice president has also campaigned for population issues in connection with mothers health and emphasizes the need to Implicit Bias against Black Women in the healthcare system. This approach "takes the needs of women of color Ernst, who may be affected by attacks on reproductive freedom, as we have seen in the two years since Dobbs," says Murray.

climate and environment

Harris has long campaigned for measures in the field of climate and environmental justice, says Leah Stokes, researcher for climate policy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As the district prosecutor in San Francisco and then the Attorney General of the State of California, Harris became an advocate for municipalities who are at the forefront of pollution through fossil fuels, says Stokes. Harris followed a similar way to her work for public health and the environment as a senator from 2017-2021.

If she wins in November, Harris is expected to do both the swing and the Exercise Investments , which has brought the bidges into the climate movement in the USA. This includes the provision of more than 1 Billion US dollar for clean energies and climate change over a decade, a legislative performance that many energy experts, according to many energy experts, could significantly reduce the US greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.

"Harris and bidges are in line with regard to the climate, and that's exactly what we need," says Stokes. "Our goals for 2030 are just around the corner, and we cannot afford to push the progress back for another four years."