Connecting With Congress to Advance Kidney Cancer Research
Kidney cancer advocacy efforts have spread the urgency and importance of funding research in the field to members of Congress.
As part of a collaboration with KidneyCAN, CancerNetwork® spoke with Elizabeth P. Henske, MD, and Jason Muhitch, PhD, about the role that conversations with congressional members in the US play in advancing research efforts across the kidney cancer field.
Henske is the director of the Center for LAM Research and Clinical Care and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Muhitch is an associate professor of oncology, cochair of the Genitourinary Translational Research Group, deputy director of Graduate Studies, and a member of the Department of Immunology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.
According to Henske, discussions among members of Congress, researchers, clinicians, and patients with kidney cancer have spread the urgency and importance of kidney cancer research to government officials. Muhitch highlighted how this outreach can help secure additional funding for research and emphasized the “powerful” statements that patient advocates have made as part of these conversations.
KidneyCAN is a nonprofit organization with a mission to accelerate cures for kidney cancer through education, advocacy, and research funding. Learn more about KidneyCAN’s mission and work here.
Transcript:
Henske: One of the enjoyable things has been to interact with the staff members of Congress as part of kidney cancer advocacy for research funding. It’s inspiring to be on a call with other researchers, clinicians, and together with individuals who are personally affected by kidney cancer and to convey the importance of this mission to individuals who are working in Congress [and] may have little knowledge about kidney cancer. They seem to almost immediately grasp the urgency and importance of what we are working on.
Muhitch: Being on these calls and in these meetings with the congressional offices, each of us has our own unique perspectives. We can offer how kidney cancer research funding can also lead to improved treatments and outcomes [while] training the next generation of scientists in this area. But the most powerful statements in those meetings come from our patient advocates. It’s all personal for us in one way or another with cancer, and they bring their stories to the forefront.
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