The fiscal year 2011 budget process got underway today when President Obama sent Congress his budget proposal.  The President’s $3.8 trillion budget includes a three-year freeze on non-security discretionary spending in order to save about $250 billion over 10 years and start narrowing the $1.6 trillion gap between proposed budget outlays and tax receipts.  The freeze caps the overall level of spending so that some programs get increases (for example, cancer research at NIH and NCI receives a funding increase), while other programs (including some of the cancer control programs at the CDC) are cut.  The freeze comes on top of a proposal to eliminate, or scale back, 120 programs in order to save more than $20 billion.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued the following statement of support,

“[u]nder this budget, we will provide the health and human services that Americans depend on more effectively, slashing waste and focusing programs on results.  And we’ll make many of the necessary investments our country has been putting off for years, including investments in fighting health care fraud, strengthening our public health infrastructure, and getting serious about health and wellness,” said Sebelius. “This budget is a big step toward a healthier, stronger America.” Read the rest of this entry »

The fiscal year 2010 Labor-HHS-Education portion of the omnibus appropriations conference report funds the Colorectal Cancer Screening, Education and Outreach program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at $45 million.  This is a $6 million increase over fiscal year 2009 (14.3 percent increase).

We need your help to get Congress to continue to increase funding for colorectal cancer programs next year!  Register now to join us at the 2010 Call-on Congress, and continue reading for more details on fiscal year 2010 funding for cancer programs and research.

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Although the fiscal year ended on September 30, to-date Congress has only completed 5 of the 12 annual appropriations bills.  This week, Congress moved forward with a couple of important steps and it looks like they are now on track to complete the remaining 7 bills before the end of the year.

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Today, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the approval of the first 13* human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines for use in NIH-funded research.  Children’s Hospital in Boston developed 11 of the approved lines and Rockefeller University in New York City developed two additional lines.

All of the approved lines were obtained from embryos left over by couples seeking treatment for infertility who consented to their use for research under the NIH’s Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday, August 7, the Senate unanimously confirmed the appointment of Francis Collins, MD, PhD, as the new director of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Collins is both a physician and an expert in genetics.  He led the Human Genome Project to an early success in identifying and sequencing the 25,000 genes in the human genome and headed the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) from 1993 through 2008. Read the rest of this entry »