Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act

The Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act is named in honor of the memory of Representative Deborah Pryce's daughter Caroline, who passed away in 1999 at age nine from Neuroblastoma. This authorization bill enjoyed bipartisan support, passed the House unanimously 416-0, and was signed into law by the President on July 29, 2008.

The Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act calls upon the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of NIH and other Federal agencies with an interest in prevention and treatment of pediatric cancer to continue to enhance, expand, and intensify pediatric cancer research and other activities related to pediatric cancer, including therapeutically applicable research to generate effective treatments, pediatric preclinical testing and pediatric clinical trials through National Cancer Institute-supported pediatric cancer clinical trial groups and their member institutions. This research, and the improving treatments it will help to develop, will allow children with cancer the opportunity to enjoy full and healthy lives, while reducing their long-term health care and education costs.

The Act also authorizes award grants to childhood cancer professional and direct service organizations for the expansion of activities that provide information on treatment protocols to ensure early access to the best available therapies and clinical trials for pediatric cancers. Ensuring that children get the best type of treatment as soon as possible is especially important for pediatric cancer both because children and adolescents are much more vulnerable to the side effects of these treatments and because they have the ability to recover fully if they get the right treatment. Additionally, these grants would also be used to provide information on the late effects of pediatric cancer treatment to ensure access to necessary long-term medical and psychological care, specialized education resources for school reentry and postsecondary education and other support services.

Additionally, this legislation authorizes the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to award a grant to enhance and expand existing infrastructure to track the epidemiology of pediatric cancer into a comprehensive nationwide registry of pediatric cancer cases.

Unfortunately, while this legislation was authorized to receive $30 million in total funding, the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act has received inadequate funding from Congress.  The Childhood Cancer Caucus urges full funding of this very important legislation.