American Cancer Society worried about lack of federal research grants
by IPR News
September 30, 2011
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and breast cancer charities are gearing up for another month of peppering the country with pink to raise awareness and research funds. It’s the latter of those that concerns American Cancer Society’s Vicki Rakowski. In April, the Congressional budget deal passed to avoid a government shutdown included a two-hundred-and-ten million dollar budget cut for the National Institutes of Health – the agency that oversees the award of National Cancer Institute federal research grants. Rakowski, the ACS Great Lakes Division Chief Mission Officer says researchers had hoped that federal funding would be doubled this year.
While the National Institutes of Health has decreased the amount of grants it is awarding, an Indiana project has just been given one of the few. A five-hundred thousand dollar grant will fund a program based at Indiana University Health Arnett Hospital in Lafayette that will expand research technology and awareness of colorectal cancer.