The 2018 Florida Legislative Session was the last session under current leadership, sandwiched between a hurricane and a campaign season. There was a fair amount of controversy, which led to dead legislation and stripped funding. However, through all the conflict you all did a great job of helping with our messaging and reaching the legislators in assistance with our lobbying team in Tallahassee. We are happy to report that the House and Senate have agreed to provide $1.83 million for the Mary Brogan Breast & Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, all in recurring dollars!
Thanks to our collective voice, a budget including more than $178.8 million in mission-related appropriations is awaiting the Governor’s approval, including funding for three of ACS CAN’s top priorities.
Mary Brogan Breast & Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program - The Legislature approved total state funding of $1.83 million, which is a decrease of $370,000 in total funding. However, all of that funding is now recurring which is an increase of $1.53 million in recurring revenue. Recurring revenue means it will be included in next year’s base budget, which marks the seventh year in a row that the Legislature has invested state dollars in the program.
Biomedical Research - The James E. King program was appropriated $10 million and the Bankhead-Coley Program $10 million for Fiscal Year 2017-18. Pediatric Cancer Research was funded at $3,000,000, increasing the significant investment Florida makes in the state’s competitive, peer-review research programs by $1 million. Those additional dollars have been allocated specifically for pediatric cancer research.
Tobacco Prevention and Education - The program is slated to receive approximately $70 million. All contracts awarded through the program are required to include performance measures and quantifiable outcomes based upon the Centers for Disease Control’s best practices. In the last 10 years the program has reduced smoking rates to the lowest we have ever seen and saved the state over $17.7 billion dollars in smoking related health care costs.
We would like to thank you for your continued commitment, and for the important role you played in a very successful legislative session. Updated information on our priorities can be found at www.fightcancer.org/florida. You can follow the action on Twitter at @ACSCAN_Florida and be sure to click here to follow us on Facebook.
Yours in the fight,
Matt
After months of delay and hard negotiations, Congress has finally passed a funding bill! The bill includes a small increase for cancer research and prevention programs.