The Take Home:
1- The Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program has been funded for the next year.
2- The PCRP has been funded with $90 million dollars, an increase of $10 million dollars over the prior years budgets.
This post is my first on the new Cancer ABCs Prostate Cancer and Advanced Prostate Cancer Blogs. I cannot help feeling over joyed to finally get back to writing a blog.
In 2005 I started the Malecare Advanced Prostate Cancer blog. In order to focus my attention on starting this new entity, Cancer ABCs, I stopped contributing to the blog this past January.
Besides being happy to be able to start blogging again, I am pleased that this post, my first post on these two blogs, allows me to share the great news. The U.S. Defense Department’s Prostate Cancer Research Program (PCRP) will be funded this coming fiscal year at the $90 million level. This includes an increase of $10 million over prior years funding levels.
This increase in funding did not come without great effort from many individual advocates and advocacy organizations. I particularly want to point out that Zero served as the community’s lead advocacy organization in ensuring that the program remained funded. Thank you, Zero for a job well done.
Also, I wish to acknowledge and thank Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Georgia), Rep. Peter King (R-New York), Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) who led efforts to preserve funding for the program. They obtained the signatures from over 100 House and Senate members on letters to the appropriations committee.
Given the current state of affairs for federal research funding and the PCRP’s history of not having received any increases in the annual funding level over many years, this is a remarkable moment for the Prostate Cancer Community.
The PCRP is the most efficient and productive prostate cancer research program in the world. The program, along with many other important research strides that contribute to the goal of conquering prostate cancer, is responsible for having contributed to the development of three new drugs now FDA approved for the treatment of men with advanced prostate cancer as well as starting and supporting the Prostate Cancer Clinical Trial Consortium, and the Prostate Cancer Research Project (a major racial disparities project).
We remain hopeful that the funding for the PCRP will be increased again in the future. We had advocated for funding levels of $120 million for this coming fiscal year, so we now know what the target will be for the following year.
Joel T. Nowak, MA, MSW wrote this Post. Joel is the CEO/Executive Director of Cancer ABCs. He is a Cancer Thriver diagnosed with 5 primary cancers - Thyroid, Metastatic Prostate, Renal, Melanoma and a rare cancer, Appendiceal Cancer.
