By Anjee Davis, MPPA
There’s an old saying in Washington that cuts through the competing demands our elected officials face every day: Show me your budget and I’ll show you your priorities. Put simply, what gets funded gets prioritized — and what gets prioritized gets done.
This is why we need a focused effort to answer the needs of Americans who are dying of colorectal cancer without answers. Nearly 100 members of the House and Senate have agreed with me on this point and have signed letters petitioning both chambers to fund a dedicated Colorectal Cancer Research Program within the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2027.
Despite this remarkable demonstration of bipartisan support, the House Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2027 did not include funding for a dedicated colorectal cancer research program. It is now up to the Senate to recognize the very real risks and tremendous opportunity they have to set the record straight by designating funding to an initiative that will save the lives of countless young Americans.
The Top Cancer Killer of Young Americans Does Not Have its Own Research Budget
Since its inception in 1992, the CDMRP has played a central role in fostering novel approaches to biomedical research, and the results speak for themselves. According to a January study from the American Cancer Society, mortality rates for people under age 50 have declined for four of the five leading cancers in the U.S. These include breast and lung cancers – both of which have received dedicated funding as part of the CDMRP and have now begun to stand out as shining examples of what’s possible when our nation bands together to focus on a fight that matters.
The one outlier, colorectal cancer, is moving in the opposite direction. Colorectal cancer deaths have continued to increase at a rate of 1.1% per year since 2005, making it the leading cause of cancer-related death for people under 50. At current rates, 55,230 people will die of colorectal cancer in the U.S. this year. Despite this alarming trend, colorectal cancer is the only one of the top five cancer killers not to have its own, dedicated research program as part of the CDMRP.
To put this in perspective, colorectal cancer kills more people under 50 than any other cancer; it steals too much, too soon, but it still doesn’t have a name on the budget. That does not mean the CDMRP does not provide any funding for colorectal cancer research. Colorectal cancer research is eligible for funding through the CDMRP’s larger Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program, but the reality is that it is constantly vying for attention in a world of competing priorities. Accordingly, in 2024, just 8 colorectal cancer research projects were funded out of a list of 73 promising applications.
Senate Has the Power to Rewrite History
That level of investment is unacceptable for a disease that, this year alone, will claim nearly as many Americans as the Vietnam War did over two decades. And let’s not forget that one of the core mandates of the CDMRP is to drive active military duty readiness by funding research that prevents diseases in young people – the very segment of Americans where we are seeing new diagnoses and mortality rates rise at the fastest rate.
We know we can reverse this trend because we’ve seen our country take on a similar challenge and succeed spectacularly. In 1992, the year the CDMRP was launched, breast cancer had an observed rate of 129.2 cases per 100,000 women per year with 31.7 deaths per 100,000 women. In just three decades, we cut that death rate nearly in half. In 2023, while incidence had grown to 132.9 cases per 100,000 women, the death rate had dropped to 18.6. The five-year survival rate for breast cancer is now 99%.
Deadly, Yet Preventable
In colorectal cancer, we are dealing with an enemy that is even more confounding because, despite its growing mortality rate and predilection toward ever-younger populations, it is a highly treatable, and in many cases a completely preventable, disease. In fact, the five-year relative survival rate for stage I colon cancer in the U.S. is about 92%, and 88% for stage I rectal cancer. People are dying not because colorectal cancer is incurable, but because it’s being caught too late.
Focused research has the power to address the gaps in care, screening challenges and the proliferation of cases in younger patient populations that have made colorectal cancer such an effective killer.
At Fight Colorectal Cancer, our community of 1.6 million survivors – a group that includes hundreds of current and former members of the U.S. military – has fought for this line item for years. We need to invest in ending it once and for all and in giving patients and their families more time. That will only happen when we agree, together, that colorectal cancer deserves the same focus and urgency that have helped us turn the tide on other cancers.
About the author:
Anjee Davis, MPPA, is the CEO of Fight Colorectal Cancer