Cancer Ambassadors Come to the Hill
CANCER
The New Britain Herald
Tia Albright
Boston University Washington News Service
September 20, 2006
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 – Cancer survivors and other advocates from Connecticut and elsewhere around the country came to Capitol Hill Wednesday to lobby for cancer research funding.
“We’re here in Washington asking for three things: the extension and reauthorization of the breast and cervical cancer early detection [program], a five percent funding increase for the National Institutes of Health for cancer research, and for our senators to sign the promise” to follow the American Cancer Society’s proposed agenda to end cancer-related deaths by 2015, said Hedy Field, a Connecticut volunteer from Thomaston.
The lobbying effort, part of an American Cancer Society’s two-day push for federal funding, termed “Celebration on the Hill,” included 39 Connecticut volunteers. They plan to meet with the Connecticut congressional delegation to discuss the funding for cancer research and request their signatures for the “Congressional Cancer Promise,” which lists steps the society argues that Congress must take in helping to fight cancer and “eliminate death and suffering” by 2015.
Field participated in the effort because she has lost four people close to her to the disease: her 49-year-old father-in-law to lung and laryngeal cancer, one grandmother to pancreatic cancer and the other to stomach cancer, and her best friend from middle school to breast cancer at 28.
“I don’t know anybody who hasn’t been affected by this disease,” Field said. “We need to find a cure.”
In 2003, 22.7 percent of all deaths in the United States were a result of cancer, according the American Cancer Society.
In 2005, there were approximately 16,920 cases of cancer diagnosed in Connecticut, and the state spent $2,422,067 on cancer prevention, according to Trust for America’s Health, a public health advocacy group.
During the two-day event, the American Cancer Society has erected a “Wall of Hope,” nearly 5,000 banners covered by millions of signatures from across the country, on the National Mall to honor cancer survivors and patients.
Alice Leonard, a Connecticut ambassador and paramedic from Torrington, participated in the event because she never wants anyone to have to experience the devastating effect that cancer can have on an individual or a family.
Leonard’s husband survived non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and has been cancer-free for eight years.
“I’ve also had a lot of friends with cancer, and one very good friend who died from cancer,” Leonard said. “I decided that I needed to do something positive and have money raised for reasearch. I have a 4-year-old grandaughter, and I don’t want her ever to have to hear those words, ‘I have cancer,’ from someone she loves.”
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