Urge Your Members of Congress to Participate in Your Congress-Your Health

Research!America and our partners have launched Your Congress-Your Health. Every Member of Congress has been invited to respond to a questionnaire about medical research, the deficit, and support for federal agencies that conduct research to improve health (NIH, FDA, CDC, NSF, and AHRQ). Please contact your Representative and Senators TODAY to urge them to respond to the questionnaire.

Cuts to research funding have already occurred at NIH, NSF, CDC, and AHRQ. That is why it is more important than ever for Americans know where lawmakers stand on these critical issues.

Take action now!

Do You Know Your Members of Congress?

Either way, today is the day to get in touch with your member in the House of Representatives.

The House is currently crafting a spending bill that may include unprecedented funding cuts to NIH, NSF, CDC, AHRQ and FDA. These cuts represent a major threat to the nation’s health, job growth and competitiveness.

It is critical that you contact your representatives TODAY so they know that cuts to American research are unacceptable.

It's about your job. Your health and the future well-being of your family. It takes 30 seconds to send a message and another 30 seconds to share with your contacts via email or Facebook.

Your minute could be the constituent voice that convinces Congress to protect research.

Come to the 2011 National Health Research Forum

The Research!America annual National Health Research Forum is an amazing opportunity to hear leaders of the health research community talk about the issues of today and tomorrow. Below is the full invitation and I definitely recommend anyone who can attending. (Bonus: you can meet some of your fellow New Voices in person!)

Tuesday, March 15, 2011
11:45 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Join Research!America for the 2011 National Health Research Forum on March 15! This annual event brings together heads of federal agencies for health and science research, as well as leaders from industry, academia and patient advocacy.

Lunch will be served at 11:45 a.m. and Research!America's chair, The Honorable John Edward Porter, will provide welcoming remarks beginning at 12:10 p.m. Michael Riley, managing editor of Bloomberg Government, and Clive Crook, senior editor of The Atlantic, will serve as moderators for two back-to-back panels with audience Q&A.

Confirmed panelists include:

• John J. Castellani, president and CEO, PhRMA
• The Hon. Mike Castle, member of U.S. Congress (1993-2011)
• Carolyn M. Clancy, MD, director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
• Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director, National Institutes of Health
• Victor Dzau, MD, chancellor of health affairs, Duke University
• Thomas R. Frieden, MD, MPH, director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Margaret A. Hamburg, MD, commissioner, Food and Drug Administration
• Harry Johns, MBA, president & CEO, Alzheimer\'s Association
• David C. Page, MD, director, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
• Ellen V. Sigal, PhD, founder and president, Friends of Cancer Research
• Elias Zerhouni, MD, president, global research and development, sanofi-aventis

Learn more about the National Health Research Forum, and register online today. Admission for Research!America members is complementary.

Research!America thanks our sponsors: sanofi-aventis; Pfizer, Inc; PhRMA; Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Battelle; Infocast; Zogby International; and Health Affairs.


For information other than sponsorship opportunities, contact Michelle Hernandez at mhernandez at researchamerica.org.

Make sure to leave us a comment and let us know you're coming!

Environmental Health Research Saves Lives and Money

Along with public opinion and advocacy, research is another important driver of policy decisions. Research is the an essential tool for the identification of safe alternatives for chemicals in commerce that are a health concern. Efforts by scientists in areas such as green chemistry aim to design new chemicals that have little to no negative effects on our health.

The same research tools can also be used to guide chemical regulatory policy. To encourage regulation of a specific chemical, research needs to prove it poses a threat to human health. To better understand the risk posed by chemical exposures, scientists first needed to develop methods to identify which chemicals are getting into our bodies and at what levels. One technique is bio-monitoring; which involves looking at both the environment a person lives in and samples from the person themselves.

Historically, human exposures were estimated from the concentration of a chemical in the environment, food, water, or consumer goods. But advances have enabled scientists to directly measure the concentration of a chemical or metabolites in specimen, such as blood, urine, or bone. A recent CDC study detected over 212 chemicals in the U.S. population. Even DDT was found at a detectable level in children, despite the fact that it had been banned decades before they were born.

But what does bio-monitoring data mean for public health? The problem is that bio-monitoring studies on their own do not determine the relationship between chemical exposures and health effects. Bio-monitoring is the first step, but can only determine what enters our bodies. In order for regulatory action to be taken, these chemical exposures must be linked to specific effects, as was done for children's lead exposure and mental deficits. Unfortunately, for endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) many links remain unknown.


To better determine links between environmental exposures and health effects, a multi-agency collaboration is conducting a national research effort called the National Children’s Study . The study will track 100,000 children from before birth to the age of 21 collecting data on their chemical exposures and potentially related health effects. Then, researchers will analyze the data to learn how environment influences health, including evidence identifying which chemicals in our bodies are making us sick.

The study is focusing on children because research has documented their unique vulnerability to chemicals, and how exposures during development can set us up for chronic health problems and the development of diseases later in life.

Because of the sheer size and length, the National Children’s Study will be expensive. To get the full benefit, it is critical that funding is maintained. This study is about prevention, we need to try to stop environmentally related health effects before they start. Investment in environmental health research is important because of the clear potential to save both lives and treatment costs.


This is Part 9 in the Chemical Exposures and Public Health series.
Part 1 - From Interest to Passion
Part 2 - An Environmental Health Risk
Part 3 - Lead: A Regulatory Success Story
Part 4 - Something My Body Needs Anyway?
Part 5 - Obesity's Elephant: Environmental Chemicals
Part 6 - Why Our Approach to Toxicology Must Change
Part 7 - Failures of U.S. Chemical Regulation
Part 8 - Cleaning Up Our Act
Part 9 - Environmental Health Research Saves Lives and Money
Part 10 - Call to Action

A-B...C-D-C?

In the world of government health agencies, there are so many acronyms that it starts to look like alphabet soup. Under the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), there is the ACF, AoA, AHRQ, ATSDR, CDC, CMS, FDA, HRSA, IHS, NIH, OIG and SAMHSA.

Confused yet?

Other health agencies focus on regulation, research and administering Medicaid and Medicare, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is our nation’s premier organization that is focused on health promotion, disease prevention and public health.

The CDC was founded on July 1, 1946 in Atlanta, GA originally called Communicable Disease Center. In its first years of existence, the CDC focused on fighting malaria by killing mosquitoes.

In 1970, the CDC’s name was changed to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and expanded its mission to prevent chronic and infectious diseases, injury, workplace hazards and disability.

Today, the CDC focuses on five strategic areas: supporting state and local health departments, improving global health, implementing measures to decrease leading causes of death, strengthening surveillance and epidemiology, and reforming health policies.

You don't have to be a part of the CDC to care about public health. All around the country, people are recognizing the contributions of public health and drawing attention to issues that are important to improving the public’s health. Get out and get active! April 5-11 is National Public Health Week. Click here to find events happening near you.


This is Part 2 in the Introduction to Federal Agencies series.
Part 1 - Acronyms, Abbreviations and Agencies

Acronyms, Abbreviations and Agencies

Washington, DC is a city whose vernacular is deeply rooted in acronyms and abbreviations. Sometimes it feels like you need a top secret clearance or access to a guide book of all the different non-profits, for-profits, voluntary health groups, patient groups, and federal agencies. For (completely made up) example, "We recently saw the CBO's numbers for LHHS, but they don't match the OMB numbers that we saw a month ago regarding NIH or CDC."

If you understood that, hooray for you! If not, you're not alone. Heck, I'm pretty sure the CBO doesn't even have numbers for LHHS. But the point is there are an awful lot of groups around here talking about an amazing number of things - many of which deserve our attention.

Here at New Voices, there are four federal agencies we talk about a lot:

1. AHRQ - Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
2. CDC - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
3. FDA - Food and Drug Administration
4. NIH - National Institutes of Health

We're going to help decode these four multi-letter names so you can see the agencies behind them over the next few weeks. Come back tomorrow for Kimberly's look into the CDC.