The Number That Got Me
I looked something up on a Sunday afternoon last month.
The National Cancer Institute's total budget for fiscal year 2024 was about $7.2 billion.
The pediatric cancer research share of that budget was roughly 8 percent. About $576 million.
$576 million sounds like a lot until you divide it across every pediatric cancer diagnosis in the United States each year, every rare pediatric cancer that gets almost no dedicated research, every clinical trial that needs infrastructure, every early-career pediatric oncology researcher trying to fund their first grant, every drug development pipeline that isn't yet in the private sector's line of sight.
Divided across all of that, $576 million is not enough.
That was the number that got me. Not because it's shockingly small on its own. Because of what it has to cover, and because of what's left uncovered.
This is the number underneath every conversation about pediatric cancer treatment advancement. It's the number underneath every child's protocol built on drugs from the 1960s. It's the number underneath every survivor's late-effects monitoring calendar. It's the number underneath every family sitting in a clinic chair today wondering when a better version of chemotherapy is going to arrive.
The number isn't inevitable. It's a policy choice. Policy choices can be changed.
That's what CCAM is asking of us. Look at the number. Sit with it. Do something small about it before September ends.
Dina
Mom of Max | Founder, Maxwell’s Toy Shoppe
Childhood Cancer Advocate 💛
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