Denmark man to lobby for cancer issues in Washington

 September 20, 2004

Chris Wood was told he had 1 1/2 years to live more than 20 years ago

Today, American Cancer Society volunteers from Wisconsin, including Chris Wood of Denmark, will join an estimated 300 cancer survivors, patients, volunteers and their supporters from across the country in Washington, D.C., for the American Cancer Society's Annual Lobby Day.

The Wisconsin volunteers will ask federal lawmakers to support legislation that would empower the Food and Drug Administration with regulatory authority over tobacco products and to vote for a bill to help patients navigate the bureaucracy of health care systems. Wood has been a cancer survivor for more than 20 years and is taking part in Lobby Day for the first time.

"I was once told I had a year-and-a-half to live because of cancer," said Wood, "More than 20 years later, I want to do anything I can do to help people going through the same thing. I look forward to heading to our capitol to encourage Reps. (Mark) Green, (Tammy) Baldwin and (Paul) Ryan to work towards passing the American Cancer Society's legislative agenda to help cancer patients."

Wood has been active with the American Cancer Society in several programs and has served as a mentor for individuals and their families as they battle cancer.

"If I can do anything to help someone going through cancer - to give them hope - I'd like to be able to do that," Wood said.

Others in the delegation include Donna Beals, Clinton, and Amy Ketterer, Stoughton. The society is focusing its 2004 Lobby Day efforts on two key issues, according to a release from the state office in Madison.. The first is legislation to provide tobacco growers with a buyout while empowering the FDA with regulatory authority over tobacco products. Leading tobacco growers' organizations and public health groups agreed several years ago that a buyout and FDA regulation are complementary issues.

The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly in July for the proposal, which included an estimated $12 billion buyout for growers paid for by the tobacco companies and at no cost to the taxpayer. The FDA provision would regulate public health, not farms, by:

- Restricting advertising and promotions aimed at children;

- Stopping illegal sales to children;

- Requiring changes in products to make them less harmful and addictive;

- Prohibiting unsubstantiated health claims on "reduced risk" products;

- Requiring disclosure of ingredients and tobacco industry research and;

- Requiring larger, more informative warnings be placed on tobacco products.

The matter is now before a House-Senate conference committee.

The society is also working actively this year to pass the Patient Navigator, Outreach, and Chronic Disease and Prevention Act. The legislation seeks to establish demonstration grants to create patient navigator programs in needy communities, a sort of "buddy system" pairing patients with a health professional often known as a "patient navigator." These programs fund a primary care provider and patient navigator to offer a personalized approach to helping people in medically underserved communities move through the healthcare system and get affordable, understandable prevention, detection and treatment services needed to combat diseases like cancer