Day of Action : Ask Congress to Invest in Medical Research
We are proud to be a part of today’s Rally for Medical Research Hill Day, an annual event that unites advocates from around the country and across the medical research advocacy community to urge Congress to continue to make funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a national priority. You can join us by participating in today’s National Day of Action!
Use our action alert to urge your Senators to provide the NIH with at least $46.4 billion (a $3.5 billion increase) to the base budget in Fiscal Year 2022. The House of Representatives included this funding in an appropriations package passed in late July but the Senate has not yet taken up consideration of this bill.
Medical research has always had strong bipartisan support. We thank Members of Congress for providing six straight years of robust funding increases for the NIH, and we ask for this momentum to continue in FY 2022. A strong investment from the federal government is critical for the thousands of children in the U.S. who will be diagnosed this year, as progress in research is almost entirely dependent on federal funding.
We also ask that House and Senate leadership complete work on the FY2022 spending bill as quickly as possible to avoid the delays and disruptions caused by continuing resolutions.
In addition to sending this action alert to your Senators, you can help elevate today’s National Day of Action by joining the conversation on Twitter. Please use the hashtags #RallyMedRes, #FundNIH, and #ChildhoodCancer.
Here are some sample tweets to consider:
Thanks [@CongressMember] for your commitment to medical research! Grateful to have your support for @NIH funding and #ChildhoodCancer. #RallyMedRes
Progress against #ChildhoodCancer relies on strong funding for the NIH. Sustained, predictable funding growth ensures that we can provide hope for the 16,000 American children who will receive a cancer diagnosis this year. #RallyMedRes #FundNIH
Today’s science could lead to a breakthrough treatment for a child with a terminal cancer diagnosis. To deliver on that promise we need sustained, predictable funding for #NIH. #RallyMedRes #ChildhoodCancerAwarenessMonth
Children’s Cancer Cause is serving as an advocacy lead during this ninth annual Rally for Medical Research, ensuring that the voice and perspective of children with cancer is included in the broader conversation about the importance of medical research.
Over 90% of children and adolescents who are diagnosed with cancer each year in the U.S. are treated at a children’s cancer center that is affiliated with the NCI-supported Children’s Oncology Group (COG). Each year, approximately 4,000 children who are diagnosed with cancer enroll in a COG-sponsored clinical trial.
“The Children’s Oncology Group is the major international group that studies and evaluates therapies in children,” said our founder Susan L. Weiner, PhD. “Trials through the Children’s Oncology Group have been very carefully constructed and they couldn’t have been done without the kind of coordination… that NCI has supported for all these years. And the NCI has supported not just the Children’s Oncology Group but also a critical consortium - one on brain tumors and one on neuroblastoma - hard to treat, relatively low survival rates. Bad tumors that can affect all the systems in the body. Through NCI’s focused support, research about these particular tumors has slowly and carefully advanced.”