​Highlights include Cancer Votes, In Due Season film screenings, Inclusive Volunteer Engagement Training, and more!

A message from ACS CAN President Lisa Lacasse 

It's been an unpredictable and unprecedented summer this election year. We were left shaken by the attempt on the life of former President Trump and resulting death and injuries of rally attendees in Pennsylvania on July 13. Acts of political violence run counter to the work we do every day, as our dedicated team and volunteers interact and work with candidates and politicians from all political leanings, at all levels of government to execute our mission. We continue to hope for the safety and well-being of all exercising their right to participate in the political process and an election season free of violence. 

A week later, on July 21, the nation received news that President Biden was stepping down from the presidential race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate. During his Oval Office address on July 24, President Biden acknowledged his commitment to the Cancer Moonshot both now and in the future, saying "I will keep fighting for my Cancer Moonshot so we can end cancer as we know it, because we can do it." We publicly acknowledged President Biden's remarks on social media and thanked him on behalf of families impacted by cancer, for his commitment to our shared goal.

On Tuesday, Vice President Harris announced her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who has been a long-time supporter of ACS CAN's cancer priorities. Governor Walz has championed our federal priorities in Congress and actively participated in our Gubernatorial Cancer Votes campaign in 2018. In July, former President Trump selected Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance, who has served in Congress for two years. Senator Vance cosponsored the Accelerating Kids' Access to Care Act, a priority for the Alliance for Childhood Cancer, of which ACS CAN is a member. We continue to engage with his office on our advocacy priorities.

Despite the uncertainty of the next few months, we can predict with certainty that ACS CAN will remain focused on our work to reduce the cancer burden nationwide. We know it will continue to take strong engagement from all of us and reinforcement of the nonpartisan partnership we are part of to reach this goal.

Our Cancer Votes work remains strong, with 50 candidates now having signed the Cancer Promise. Over the last month, our Cancer Votes National Ambassador and Board member, Phil O'Brien, moderated a coffee chat with Sen. Tammy Baldwin, earning media coverage. We are scheduled to meet with the Harris campaign to discuss our key priorities and continue outreach to the Kennedy and Trump campaign teams with similar opportunities. We also launched the Cancer Votes Challenge on our Power to Impact: Essential Briefing for Cancer Votes Volunteers call, with over 100 volunteers joining live. Our goal for the Cancer Votes Challenge is to reach as many candidates seeking federal office as possible with our ask to sign the Cancer Promise. You can help by asking the Presidential and U.S. Senate candidates to sign the Cancer Promise.

We appreciate the work you do each day on behalf of cancer patients and their families, and we look forward to another upcoming and impactful Leadership Summit & Lobby Day next month! 

Lisa

In Case You Missed It:

We premiered In Due Season in Washington, D.C. on July 31 at a well-attended screening with featured storytellers Brian Williams, Neidre Fears, and Pam Williams, all with lived experience in the Medicaid coverage gap, and expert voices Dr. Karen Winkfield, ACS CAN Board member, and Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of Black Voters Matter. The evening was hosted by ACS CAN Board Chair Dr. Kimberly Jeffries Leonard and concluded by a dynamic panel including the film's director Ashley O'Shay, Neidre Fears, Dr. Winkfield, Cliff Albright, Dr. Patrice A. Harris, co-founder and CEO of eMed and former president of the American Medical Association, and moderated by award-winning journalist Andrea Roane. 

If you weren't able to join us in person in D.C., please join us this evening, August 7 at 7:30 pm eastern for a virtual screening hosted by ACS CAN's Black Volunteer Caucus in partnership with Black Voters Matter. Register here! 

Interested in hosting a screening? Please contact Carter Steger, VP, State and Local Campaigns. We want to elevate this film and the importance of our efforts to close the remaining Medicaid coverage gaps in the ten states that have yet to expand Medicaid. 

Inclusive Volunteer Engagement Training: ACS CAN volunteers and staff representing five states came together in San Francisco, CA a few weeks ago to attend the first Inclusive Volunteer Engagement Training, one part of a pilot project to more intentionally engage with diverse communities. This pilot cohort reflected on personal experience, role-played engaging with new partners, and learned about structural biases in health care and cancer care related to their advocacy efforts to deepen their inclusive community engagement skills. We received exceptional feedback on this effort and look forward to collaborating with our volunteers to support their efforts to engage more diverse communities in our work. This pilot program is in response to our volunteers' request for more training to build this critical skill set. 

ACS CAN is participating in the Annual National Conference of State Legislatures Legislative Summit, August 5-8 in Louisville, KY. Our state and local prevention campaigns team completed the report Fact-Based Tobacco Control Policies: How Does Your State Measure Up? as well as one-pagers for each state including D.C., Guam, Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico in preparation for the summit. The report is posted on our website: Fact-Based Tobacco Control Policies: How Does Your State Measure Up?

Social Spotlight: We feature an ACS CAN volunteer each month on social media. In July, we featured Tracy Steuckrath, Ambassador Constituent Lead in California, in honor of Disability Pride Month. "I love being a part of the ACS CAN California team because I have found a community whose goal is to end cancer as we know it," Tracy said. She feels the organization has made a commitment to the inclusion of all people because cancer doesn't discriminate. "The volunteer base includes survivors, caregivers, and the families of those touched by cancer, and as an activist, I know my voice is heard." Read more on Instagram and share! 

Take Action: We are featuring Danny Efron, an ACS CAN volunteer in Arizona, on our website and across social media this month to amplify the importance of cancer research funding. Danny was facing a stage 4 brain cancer diagnosis in 2022. A new treatment option was available that could pinpoint Danny's radiation therapy to exactly where it was needed. This new medical breakthrough was possible thanks to federal funding for cancer research through The National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute (NCI). Join Danny and make your voice heard by signing the petition urging Congress to increase funding for lifesaving cancer research. Share Danny's video on LinkedIn.

Federal Updates: 

The U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations considered and approved its draft FY25 appropriations bill that includes significant increases for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), increases for federal cancer research funding at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and an increase for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Division of Cancer Prevention and Control.  The Senate spending bill includes: $50.351 billion for NIH, which is an increase of $1.77 billion from FY24 levels, including $7.49 billion for the NCI, which is an increase of $266 million over FY24. The bill also includes $1.5 billion for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), which is the same as FY24 levels. The report recommends increasing funding for CDC's Division of Cancer Prevention and Control (DCPC) by $15 million, from $410 million in FY24 to $425 million in FY25, this includes an increase to the National Breast & Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. 

The Committee included $8,000,000, an increase of $2,000,000, for the Initiative for Improving Native American Cancer Outcomes to support efforts including research, education, outreach, and clinical access related to cancer in Native American populations.  See our press statement. 

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing in July on addressing medical debt, titled, "What Can Congress Do to End the Medical Debt Crisis in America?" ACS CAN submitted comments to the Committee ahead of the hearing calling on Congress to put forth policy solutions that address the root cause of medical debt by both reducing current medical debt and preventing future medical debt. 

Access to Clinical Trials: ACS CAN hosted a patient advocacy and public health organization briefing on the Clinical Trial Modernization Act and its benefits for patients. Seventy-four organizations participated. We also briefed our corporate partners and participated in panels and discussions with several external organizations about how this bill would benefit patients. 

Dr. William Dahut, American Cancer Society Chief Scientific Officer, moderated the Understanding the Power and Possibility of Clinical Trials Congressional Briefing hosted by Research!America. The event was attended by key congressional staff, patient advocates, and alliance members and their networks to discuss the distinct research and development challenges across the discovery, development, and delivery pipeline with a focus on how cross-sector collaboration in research and development is represented in clinical trials. 

Judicial Updates: 

ACS CAN and other public health partners sued the FDA in 2018 for failing to require tobacco manufacturers to submit pre-market tobacco applications (PMTAs) as dictated by the Tobacco Control Act. We won the lawsuit in 2019, and that victory directly resulted in millions of PMTAs being submitted and reviewed by the agency. Further action in the lawsuit forced the FDA to publicly disclose how many of the applications it has dealt with. The agency is now seeking to get out of its reporting obligations and is representing it has completed some key applications like JUUL in which it has not issued decisions. In early August, ACS CAN and tobacco control partners urged the district court to keep the reporting obligations in place and clarify that FDA has not completed its review of a product until it issues a decision on it. 

After thorough review of the publicly available materials FDA released when it provided authorization for two menthol-flavored e-cigarette products, ACS and ACS CAN experts were still mystified as to how the agency could have made the determination that these products are "in the interest of public health" to stay on the market as required by the Tobacco Control Act. ACS CAN and other tobacco control groups submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the agency seeking all data and scientific studies used in making the determination. ACS CAN vigorously objected to the authorizations when they were issued in late June. 

State Updates:

In New Jersey, Governor Murphy has signed into law the Louisa Carmen Medical Debt Relief Act, which prohibits debt collectors from reporting a patient's medical debt to consumer reporting agencies.

As noted above, we hosted a successful Cancer Votes coffee chat with U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin in Madison, Wisconsin on July 16. We have confirmed a coffee chat with U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde for September 10. 

In California our bill to extend the California Breast Cancer Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund and the California Cancer Research Voluntary Tax Contribution Fund (SB 1172) was signed into law by Gov. Newsom. These programs generate about $1 million annually for cancer research.

The Michigan legislature passed the state's budget with a $2.5 million increase in tobacco prevention and cessation funding, which brings that state's total spending to $4.3 million.

Advocacy in the News

• Politico: Washington Watch: Knudsen is happy House appropriators want to boost funding for the National Cancer Institute
• Washington Post: How Kamala Harris is tackling medical debt — with Roy Cooper's help
• Reuters: Exclusive: Health advocates target Philip Morris' U.S. launch of heated tobacco
• National Law Review: The Overturn of Chevron: A New Design for Healthcare Law
• Cancer Health: 40% of Cancer Cases and Almost Half of Deaths in U.S. Linked to Modifiable Risk Factors
• West Virginia Watch: Advocates want tobacco prevention, cessation funding on the agenda for W.V. special session
• 8 News Now: Nevada man shares cancer journey, urges early detection
• Scranton Times-Tribune: New law offers personalized health care
• WBTV Charlotte: Gov. Cooper, NCDHHS address plan to wipe medical debt for 2 million+ residents
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Some people in Georgia earn too much to get Medicaid but not enough to buy private insurance plan
• Idaho County Free Press: Guest Column: 'Medicaid expansion is a win-win proposition'
• WMTV Madison: Cancer advocates ask U.S. Senate candidates to commit to the fight