LCA-MA News:

LCA-MA Takes Lead on Letters to Massachusetts Senate and House Chairs Overseeing Spending of Federal Stimulus Money

Upstage Lung Cancer and American Lung Association-New England Join LCA-MA in Requesting Funding for Lung Cancer Reserach

May 19, 2009

The Honorable Marc C. Pacheco

Senate Chair, Joint Committee on Federal Stimulus Oversight

State House
Room 312-B
Boston, MA 02133 

Dear Chairman Pacheco,

 As the Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on Federal Stimulus Oversight, we are writing to ask that you include lung cancer early detection and research among the topics for discussion at the hearing on Health and Human Services federal stimulus funding.

 Lung cancer continues to take more lives each year than the next four most common cancers combined. In 2008, an estimated 4,930 Massachusetts citizens were diagnosed with lung cancer and 3,600 were lost to the disease. The majority of patients are diagnosed so late that they die within one year. For years studies have warned that lung cancer research was being funded far below its massive public health impact and that lung cancer in women had become an epidemic.

Nearly two out of three new cases are former smokers and never smokers, yet the stigma of smoking continues and is often used to justify the underfunding of research and early detection.

 President Obama and the Congress recognized the importance of medical research to our economy and public health by including $10.4B for the National Institute of Health in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The President also called for a doubling of federal funds for cancer research over the next 5 years.  We commend him for this. We have seen, however, that past increases in federal cancer research were not equitably distributed and had no impact on lung cancer outcomes - because the will and the commitment to change have not been there.  

The Commonwealth has done impressive work toward health care reform serving as a model to other states. With its many world- class research institutes, Massachusetts is positioned to continue to lead the health care reform movement by addressing lung cancer as a disease and developing a comprehensive, cost-effective and coordinated lung cancer research and mortality reduction program.  

Thank you, Chairman Pacheco, for your consideration of this critical public health issue.

 Sincerely,

Diane Legg                                                              Joanne O’Connor

Co-Chair                                                                   Co-Chair

LCA-MA                                                                    LCA-MA

Hildy Grossman                                                        Edward F. Miller               Founder                                                                    Senior Vice-President, Public Policy 

Upstage Lung Cancer                                              American Lung Association of New England  

Cc: The Honorable David Paul Linsky