An Important Message from Gary Reedy, CEO of American Cancer Society

In the past year our ALK Positive Outreach Committee chose to partner with American Cancer Society and the National Lung Cancer Roundtable on our Biden Cancer Initiative Commitment to address educational gaps within the medical community for biomarker testing to guide appropriate treatment for NSCLC.

One of the main goals of our Advocacy efforts is to align and build strong partnerships that will benefit all lung cancer families. ALK Positive was the FIRST patient support group to become a member of the National Lung Cancer Roundtable and our partnership is a contributing factor to lung cancer advocates being added to the roundtable task forces this year. In addition, our Biden Commitment partnership will launch a Biomarker Testing Summit to advance our goal of 100% compliance for NSCLC patients to receive biomarker testing. Our Biden Cancer Commitment and partners are working with the medical community to remove the educational burden from the newly diagnosed patient to know what testing is needed.

This week, Gary Reedy, CEO of American Cancer Society shared this statement with ALK Positive Outreach Executive Board member, Rhonda Meckstroth and has provided his willingness to share with all of our members:

“ACS CAN did send a letter in support of the Women and Lung Cancer bill (endorsement letter attached).  ACS and ACS CAN have had remarkable success in our efforts to increase funding to the NCI over the past few years, resulting in millions more being spent on lung cancer research, and we agree more needs to be done. We will continue to pursue our principal priority which is to increase overall funding to NIH and NCI and therefore, more funding for lung cancer research.

ACS is very committed to promoting evidence-based biomarker testing.  The National Lung Cancer Roundtable is convening a summit dedicated to biomarker testing in lung cancer.   We’re working hard to get all the key stakeholder organizations to the summit which has not proven to be an easy task.   We hope to have a date solidified in the next few weeks. In addition, we are meeting with ASCO and NCCN on several topics and promoting biomarker testing is high on the priority list in these partnerships.  As you know, ACS has signed on to the Biden and ALK positive initiative to promote biomarker testing.

We have a lot of work ahead of us and ACS is committed to reducing deaths from lung cancer.  We believe this represents a critical opportunity and is of highest priority in cancer control.

 Wishing you an enjoyable and relaxing Memorial Day weekend.

My best,

Gary

Gary Reedy
Chief Executive Officer
404.329.7601

American Cancer Society, Inc.
250 Williams St.
Atlanta, GA 30303
cancer.org | 1.800.227.2345