AACI will jointly host its annual Hill Day with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) on Wednesday, June 15. The event will be held virtually for the third year.
On February 18, President Biden signed another continuing resolution (CR) into law. This legislation funds the government at Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 levels until March 11.
The extended CR—combined with the highest inflation rate in nearly 40 years—has had a devastating impact on cancer research funding. Further, the CR has stalled efforts by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to increase the payline for grant proposals to 15 percent by 2025. The percentage of research grants funded by the NCI dropped from 28 percent in 1997 to 8 percent in 2019 and lags that of other institutes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which typically fund above the 20th percentile. Under the CR, this percentage is frozen at 11 percent.
Participation in Hill Day is critical to sharing our message with legislators: that stable, predictable funding increases are essential to advancing research and care at our nation’s cancer centers.
Hill Day will bring cancer center directors, researchers, physician-scientists, cancer survivors, and other advocates together online to build support for a strong federal investment in biomedical research—and cancer research in particular—through the NIH and NCI. All faculty and staff of AACI cancer centers are invited to spend the day advocating for cancer research funding.
Registration for the virtual Hill Day will open in April. In the meantime, we encourage AACI members to contact your legislators and urge them to pass the FY 2022 budget and fund the NCI at an appropriate level.
Please contact AACI Government Relations Manager Jaren Love with any questions.