We’re proud to join the cancer community this September in recognition of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month and will continue to focus our advocacy efforts year-round to improve the diagnosis, treatment and quality of life for childhood cancer patients and survivors.
Improving quality of life for patients and their families is a top priority for ACS CAN’s advocacy agenda, and advancing policies that expand access to palliative care is an essential component of our work to support cancer patients around the country.
Mariah Forster Olson, an ACS CAN Ambassador Constituent Team Lead (ACT Lead), traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to share her story as a childhood cancer survivor and to advocate on behalf of other patients and survivors during the 2019 Childhood Cancer Action Days.
We need more communities to join our movement to end cancer through legislative and policy change. One way in which we engage communities to do this is through our integration with the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life®.
Throughout the country, in every state, territory and Washington D.C., ACS CAN staff and volunteers have hit the ground running in 2017, working with local lawmakers to pass and implement public health policies proven to have the highest impact in saving lives from cancer.
Congress passed legislation to address the national public health issue of prescription drug abuse. The new law, the Comprehensive Addictions and Recovery Act (CARA), is an example of a balanced policy that not only addresses opioid addiction, but also includes provisions to help us better understand and treat chronic pain.
ACS CAN and the Alliance to Prevent the Abuse of Medicines joined together on Capitol Hill to address the critical need to preserve patient access to pain medications as policymakers work to adopt legislation to curb opioid abuse.
ACS CAN's Indiana Day at the Capitol event was one of nearly 50 similar events scheduled to take place in almost every state and the District of Columbia between January and May this year. During 2016 state sessions ACS CAN will be working to convince lawmakers to pass comprehensive smoke-free laws, increase tobacco taxes, improving the quality of life for cancer patients, prohibit the use of tanning devices for minors and guarantee access to health care and lifesaving cancer screenings.
Large hospitals tend to be the major providers of palliative care services, but just how many hospitals are meeting this need? That's what the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) and the National Palliative Care Research Center (NPCRC) set out to discover in their 2015 State-by-State Report Card on Access to Palliative Care in Our Nation's Hospitals.
Today is the start of ACS CAN's signature annual event: our Leadership Summit and Lobby Day. We'll be welcoming more than 750 cancer patients, survivors and their loved ones from all 50 states and nearly every congressional district to Washington, D.C. for three days of training, presentations, media opportunities and, of course, meetings with lawmakers.