DOVER, DE – April 30, 2010 – Local cancer advocate TJ Jurgens from Smyrna, Delaware, will represent Delaware at the annual leadership summit for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) in Salt Lake City, Utah this week. ACS CAN hosts the annual summit to gather volunteer leaders from across the country and educate them on federal legislative issues impacting the fight against cancer.
ACS CAN, the advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society, is the leading cancer advocacy organization fighting to make cancer a national priority with lawmakers. Jurgens has been the State Lead Ambassador (SLA) in Delaware for the past three years and has championed ACS CAN ‘s legislative priorities with both lawmakers and other cancer advocates.
“I am honored to represent Delaware as an advocate in the fight against cancer,” said Jurgens. “We know what it will take to make cancer history. As citizen advocates, we need to take action to make cancer a national priority by ensuring that lawmakers are doing all they can to support evidence-based policy and legislative solutions that will help defeat the disease.”
As the Delaware SLA, Jurgens works closely with Society and ACS CAN staff to manage volunteer activities across the state. Jurgens also attends meetings with lawmakers on ACS CAN’s priority legislative issues.
At the summit in Salt Lake City, Jurgens will meet with her volunteer counterparts from all 50 states, along with national and state ACS CAN and Society staff, to discuss and develop legislative campaign strategies for the next year.
“We look forward to working with TJ Jurgens over the coming year to implement legislative campaigns in Delaware to make cancer a national priority,” said Jeanne Chiquoine, government relations director for the American Cancer Society. “Together we will fight for increased cancer research funding, better access to quality health care and preventive cancer screenings and strong tobacco control policies both at the state and federal level.”
Founded in 2001, ACS CAN is building a nationwide movement of advocates who are working to pass legislation and policies that help fight cancer, which kills an estimated 560,000 people in America each year. ACS CAN’s top advocacy priorities include:
- Improved access to health care nationwide – ACS CAN has worked for years to improve access to quality health care across the country, and was the leading voice of patients in the health care reform debate. ACS CAN is working to ensure that the new law is implemented as strongly as possible for cancer patients, survivors and their families.
- Increased government funding for cancer research – ACS CAN helped to secure a $10 billion increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health in last year’s stimulus bill, and is urging Congress to sustain that investment in the coming fiscal year to spur the discovery of new treatments and screening tests.
- Support for cancer prevention and control programs – ACS CAN supports sustained investment in programs that expand access to proven cancer screenings to low-income and uninsured populations, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program.
- Strong tobacco control policies at the federal, state and local levels – ACS CAN was a strong advocate for the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which grants the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate the manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products. ACS CAN also has worked to enact comprehensive smoke-free policies and to increase tobacco excise taxes nationwide.
- Insurance guarantees for proven cancer screenings and clinical trials – ACS CAN has worked in all 50 states to pass laws that guarantee insurance coverage of lifesaving screenings including mammograms, colonoscopies and Pap tests, and that mandate coverage of routine care costs for patients enrolled in clinical trials.
ACS CAN, the nonprofit, nonpartisan advocacy affiliate of the American Cancer Society, supports evidence-based policy and legislative solutions designed to eliminate cancer as a major health problem. ACS CAN works to encourage elected officials and candidates to make cancer a top national priority. ACS CAN gives ordinary people extraordinary power to fight cancer with the training and tools they need to make their voices heard. For more information, visit www.acscan.org.
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