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Campaign 2005
The goal of Campaign 2005 was to have Congress appropriate an additional $15 million for the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) managed by the Department of Defense and have these funds earmarked for kidney cancer research. Campaign 2005 was built on lessons learned from Campaign 2004 wherein ACKC briefed House of Representatives Health Aides on kidney cancer and the urgent need to increase funding. In that campaign, Dear Colleague letters addressed to the co-chairs of the respective Senate and House defense sub-committees that draft the legislation that includes the CDMRP funding were sponsored by Senator Schumer of New York and Congressman Steve Israel of New York, the co-chair of the House Cancer Caucus. These letters asked Congressmen to sign on to a request made to the Chairs of the respective appropriation committees in the Senate and House seeking an appropriation for the CDMRP for kidney cancer research.
The CDMRP has been funded since 1992 and now provides breast, prostate, ovarian and chronic myelogenous leukemia cancer research funding but nothing for kidney cancer.
Although we were not successful in 2004, we gained much insight and started our efforts early in 2005. In February, we held a Kidney Cancer briefing for US Senate Health Aides. The briefing was sponsored by Senators Schumer (D-NY) and Specter (R-PA). Aides from 33 Senators attended the briefing representing, 17 Republican and 16 Democratic Senators representing 26 states. Jay Bitkower, President of ACKC moderated while presentations were given by Dr. Monica Liebert, Director, Office of Research, American Urological Association; Dr. Keith Flaherty, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Hematology-Oncology Division, University of Pennsylvania Health System; and Fred Atkin, Vice President of ACKC. The presentations were followed by a Kidney Cancer Survivors Panel that helped put a human face on this disease. We handed out a packet of kidney cancer information to each attendee. The briefing was well received, and it gave us a base to build upon for our 2005 Campaign.
The next step was to obtain co-sponsors for the Senate and House Dear Colleague letters. Senators Schumer (D-NY) and Specter (R-PA) and Representatives Israel (D-NY) and King (R-NY) were our co-sponsors. In order to be successful we knew we had to significantly increase the number of signatures on each of the letters over the previous year. We contacted our membership and the Kidney Cancer Online Support Group, which culminated in letter writing, emailing and telephoning members of Congress to sign on to the Dear Colleague letters. This entailed a significant amount of work over an extended period of time and thanks to all who participated, we gathered 22 Senate and 37 House signatures (more than double the number obtained in 2004) - See Dear Colleague Letters below.
Obtaining this appropriation will be extremely difficult in these fiscally tight times as several Republican aides told us that their Senators would have supported us but could not as they promised not to sign onto any initiative that increased the President's budget this year. If we are not successful this year, we will be back next year even stronger than before because we must. It is a sad note that had other kidney cancer organizations had the foresight to go after this funding years ago they probably would not have encountered any difficulty in obtaining significant money for kidney cancer research.
In the short time the ACKC has been in existence we have made a good start in getting out the message that kidney cancer research needs more funding. It was quite evident in our briefings that many members of Congress and their staff were totally unaware of kidney cancer and the pitifully few treatment options that are currently available. Now that we have raised their awareness, we intend to persist until they fund kidney cancer research at an appropriate level.
The following is the US Senate letter, then the three pages of the letter, and the following is the US House of Representatives letter, then the four pages of the House letter:
