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Write Your Representatives to Support NIH, NCI Budget Increases
As part of its ongoing efforts to advocate for stable, predictable funding increases for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), AACI has prepared a customizable letter for members to share with their representatives.
AACI encourages you to write on behalf of your cancer center to request that legislators make cancer research funding a priority in Fiscal Year 2021. It is estimated that in 2020, over 1.8 million U.S. citizens will be diagnosed with cancer and more than 600,000 will die of cancer. Estimates show that cancer costs the U.S. economy more than $216 billion annually in direct treatment costs and lost productivity and will increase rapidly as cancer incidence rises.
Investment in research at the NIH and the NCI saves lives. In fact, data from 2017 shows that, since its peak in 1991 at 215 cancer deaths per 100,000 people, the age-adjusted cancer mortality rate has dropped by 29 percent, amounting to 2.9 million lives saved.
Progress in cancer research is complex and time-intensive. However, the pace of discovery and translation of novel basic research to new therapies could be accelerated if researchers could count on an appropriate and predictable investment in federal cancer research funding. To build on the momentum of this progress, AACI is requesting that appropriators provide at least $44.7 billion for the NIH and $6.9 billion for the NCI in a Fiscal Year 2021 spending package.
For more information, please contact Jaren Love, AACI government relations manager, at 412-647-2076.