Notebook Page 23 February 2017

Budgets and taxes continue to dominate the activity of the Michigan legislature during February. The Governor presented his budget to the legislation early in the month which provides some positive points for patients around Michigan. Governor Snyder continued to show support for the Healthy Michigan Plan, Michigan’s Medicaid expansion. Also included in the budget was a continuation of the funding for the cancer and tobacco prevention programs. Those continue to stay at their current funding levels for the coming year. Now the House and Senate will continue to review the proposal and take testimony from groups around the state on the different issues included in the budget.

On February, ACS CAN along with AHA and ALA hosted a welcoming reception for the members of the 99^th legislature. This provided a great opportunity to meet some of the new lawmakers and talk to those seasoned veterans of the legislature on the major issues facing the groups this year. Attendance for the first time a was a little space, but it isn’t due to the issues of our three groups but rather taxes.

The same night the House decided to take a vote in passing a roll back of Michigan’s income tax. The current rate is at 4.25% and when that was raised there was a promise from the legislature that a rollback would happen over several years to 3.9%. The state still continued to need the money being generated from the increase so a couple years after the raise, the legislature went in and made the raise permanent.

House Republicans this year felt that this was the year that the state needed to make good on the promise of a rollback and so they pushed through legislation to do just that. What would a rollback mean, it would create a hole in the state budget to the tune of $1.1 Billion. This is a major concern is that with the declining funds major programs that we are supportive of like programs above would be cut or eliminated.

The members of the House spent over 12 hours in the House chamber trying to get enough support to have the measure pass, but at the end of the day, it failed by three votes. Now the House will continue to work the issue and can ask for the vote to be reconsidered, so this issue isn’t over yet and we will continue to monitor the activity around this issue.

Registration for Michigan’s Day at the Capitol (formerly called Lobby Day) is now open.  The Day at the Capitol will be on Wednesday, May 3^rd.  Registration will close on April 21st.  This year, we’ll be holding our event at the Radisson Hotel in downtown Lansing.  The agenda for the day will be similar as previous years with some small changes.  The urn below will take you to the registration site. 

www.acscan.org/milobbyday 

Any ACS volunteer is welcome to attend, but please let ACS CAN staff know prior to inviting anyone to ensure we are getting the right volunteers. We are looking for volunteers that are motivated to make a difference in the fight against cancer, are passionate about our mission, and are willing to share their cancer story.  Volunteers do not need to be advocacy volunteers or have any experience advocating. Appointments with lawmakers will be scheduled for all volunteers that attend.   

Our Day at the Capitol will focus on three important issues this year: 

·        The need to increase tobacco taxes to curb youth tobacco use and provide much needed funding for Michigan’s prevention programs, which have been drastically cut over the past decade, to provide cancer services and tobacco prevention to Michigan residents that need it the most. 

·        Increase access to cancer drugs through Oral Chemotherapy fairness. 

·        Create a road map for the future of Palliative Care in Michigan 

If you have any questions about Michigan's Day at the Capitol, please contact Matt Phelan. 

Our ACS CAN ACT Leads and Ambassadors are completing “Drop Bys” to their members of congress with our federal #KeepUsCovered campaign to address the ongoing debate around the Affordable Care Act.  Volunteers will continue to contact members of Congress to discuss the issue of adequate and affordable healthcare for all cancer patients and survivors. 

As always, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact Matt (matt.phelan@cancer.org) or myself (Andrew.schepers@cancer.org) with any of your questions.

Take Aways:

·        Budget work continues with no impending cuts to tobacco and cancer prevention programs and shows Healthy Michigan.

·        House fails to pass income tax rollback. This would have drastic impacts on the state, creating $1.1 Billion hole.

Notebook Page 14, April 2016

Spring has finally made its way to Lansing and with that Lawmakers are making their way out of Lansing for their two week spring break. Some budgets have moved out of their subcommittees but the Health and Human Services budget still finds itself being tweaked. Let's take a look at what happened last month in Lansing.

The House and Senate continue to work on their respective budgets for the coming fiscal year. This year the House signaled a trimming of the Health and Human Service budget which houses the programs that ACS CAN continues to support. Chairman VerHeulen said that the budget would see a reduction from the the Governor proposed for the coming fiscal year. It is unclear right now what funding will be effect in this large budget, but it is expected that both the cancer and tobacco prevention programs could be in the cross hairs. We expect to know after the legislature returns from its two week break.

The Governor signed Senate Bill 150 in March. Senate Bill would allow for patient to sync their medication for a one fill date rather than having multiple fill dates and having multiple trips to the pharmacy. ACS CAN staff worked with the legislature and interested parties to help push the legislation over the finish line. The legislation was widely supported by both the House and Senate and the Governor signed the legislation. The changes will become effective by July 2016.

More importantly Lobby Day is coming up in Michigan on April 19th. We have a ton of interest this year, thanks to everyone that has promoted our day. As we approach the deadline for Lobby Day registration next week (April 5), we’d like everyone to follow up on any potential attendees you’ve already talked with and avoid inviting any new volunteers at the last minute.  We still have dozens of potential volunteers to follow-up with so please make that a priority in the next few days. April 5th is a solid deadline due to the amount of interest we have this year for lobby day.

After the registration deadline, all registered participants will be receiving an email about logistics, transportation, and our legislative issues.  We’ll be having a call for volunteers on April 14^th at 7pm to cover the topics that will be discussed at Lobby Day.  Staff can expect an email from me soon to discuss transportation and car-pooling from your areas. Thank you again for everyone that has promoted lobby day around Michigan.

If you have any questions about what is happening in Michigan and beyond please don't hesitate to contact Andrew (andrew.schepers@cancer.org) or Matt (matt.phelan@cancer.org). 

Notebook Page 15, May 2016

Michigan's Cancer Advocates at the Capitol.

Spring has finally made it's way back to Michigan. With the arrival of spring also means that volunteers from around the state will start to make their way to Lansing to talk to our lawmakers about issues that are important to all of those who face cancer every day. Lets review the happenings of April in Lansing:

Michigan Lobby Day a Big Success!

Dr. Randy Hillard sharing his story
about oral chemotherapy fairness.

On April 19, 119 ACS CAN advocates and staff met with state legislators for our annual Michigan Lobby Day. Volunteers held 65 total meetings with legislators or their staff.  This year’s Lobby Day had over 30 more volunteers than last year and you could feel the electricity in the room.

This year’s Lobby Day focused on two policy areas: 1) support for oral chemotherapy fairness legislation and 2) increasing Michigan’s tobacco taxes and using this new revenue to fund Cancer and Tobacco Prevention Programs.

Phil Moilenan meeting with Rep. Maturen.

The day was highlighted by some great speakers.  Cliff Douglas, Vice President of Tobacco Control for the American Cancer Society and Carter Steger, Senior Director of State and Local Campaigns for ACS CAN gave the keynote address about the harms of all tobacco products.  Dr. Randy Hillard gave an inspiring talk about his battle with stomach cancer and how oral chemotherapy was available to him, but isn’t available to everyone because of its cost.

Michigan's Volunteer of the
Year Sandra Westover.

Hailey Urbach speaking at
the rally. 

To close the day, Miss Michigan International, Hailey Urbach from Grosse Pointe spoke during our rally in the Capitol rotunda.  Miss Urbach shared her mother’s story of battling breast cancer and the need to advocate for such important causes.

This year, ACS CAN awarded Sandra Westover from Frederic, MI with the annual Volunteer of the Year award for her outstanding contributions to ACS CAN and the American Cancer Society.

As a result of our Lobby Day, the Senate Insurance Committee passed our oral chemotherapy fairness legislation by a 7-0 the following day.  Our advocates pushed legislators to act and they responded.

State Update

As you can see from above the Senate Insurance committee passed out Senate bill 625 or the oral chemotherapy fairness legislation to the full Senate. It was thanks to the great work of our volunteers that helped the legislation have a smooth transition out of committee and over to the Senate floor. We will continue to monitor the legislation has it moves through the Senate. The expectation is that the legislation will move the first week in May. 

Budgets are also on the move in both chambers. This year's budgeting process is more straight forward with elections looming for House members in August and November. The two main funding lines that ACS CAN concentrates on in the budget are the tobacco and cancer prevention lines in the Health and Wellness Fund. Years past this fund has been used as a funding football but with this being an election year the funding for those programs has not been touched. This is a good first step in the movement of the budget. We will be watching now for the middle of May when both the House and Senate Fiscal agencies and the State Treasurer come together to finalize the expected revenue for the coming fiscal year. That will tell us whether the state needs to cut or if they will have more money than they expected. 

Federal Update

Colorectal cancer screening legislation is gaining momentum in Congress.   The Removing Barriers to Colorectal Cancer Act is legislation supported by ACS CAN to close a loophole in Medicare.  Many seniors are going in to get their regular colonoscopy, but it is standard practice that a doctor removes any suspicious polyp during the procedure.  We know that removing these polyps, saving lives.  The problem is that some seniors are getting bills in the mail after the procedure because the polyp removal is not considered a “screening”.  All screenings must be fully covered by insurance.  We are working hard to close this loophole to save more lives.  To find out more about this legislation, please visit http://www.acscan.org/coloncancer.

As always don't be afraid to reach out to us. Go to our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/AcsCanMichigan for all of the latest updates and action going on in Michigan.

Notebook Page 13, March 2016

Last month, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder released his official budget.  Unfortunately, Governor Snyder’s budget called for sustained funding for the state’s cancer prevention and tobacco prevention programs.  Governor Snyder also requested in his budget to use $720 million over 10 years from the tobacco master settlement agreement (MSA) to fix Detroit’s public school system.  ACS CAN does not support this move.  The Governor’s budget did not call for any increases in state revenue.

Work continues on Michigan’s campaign to raise tobacco taxes to fund prevention.  Our coalition called the Prevention Michigan Tobacco Free Campaign continues to grow.  We now have 24 groups on board including the major health organizations in the state.  Most recently, Michigan’s Prevention Network signed onto the campaign.

Recent gains with the Governor’s office toward support of a tobacco tax increase have been significantly delayed due to the water crisis in Flint.  The crisis in Flint is expected to distract the Governor’s office for the foreseeable future so our focus has now shifted towards the legislature. Michigan’s State Lead Ambassador, Phil Moilanen, will meet on March 4 with State Senator Mike Shirkey who is a key lawmaker in the State Senate. Action alerts will be going out to advocates throughout March and April leading up to Michigan’s Lobby Day.

Michigan’s annual Lobby Day will take place on April 19.  In addition to Lobby Day, we have added a Leadership Breakfast on the morning of the 19^th.  This ACS CAN Leadership Breakfast will be a fundraising event geared towards high profile volunteers and ACS CAN partners.  Dr. Randy Hillard and Vicki Rakowski, RN have agreed to serve as honorary chairs for this event.  Members of the legislative leadership and key legislators related to health policy have been invited to the breakfast to talk with those in attendance.

The legislative issues, or asks, have been finalized for Michigan’s Lobby Day.  The day will focus on two major issues, raising the state’s tobacco taxes and creating oral chemotherapy parity to increase access to cancer drugs.

At Lobby day, we’ll be asking legislators to increase the cigarette tax by $1.50 while bringing other tobacco products into parity with the cigarette tax to increase revenue.  We’ll also ask our legislators to invest $50 million of the new revenue created by this tax increase into our prevention programs.  Michigan’s Tobacco Prevention Program only receives $1.6 million in state funds annually while the Cancer Prevention Program only receives $500,000.  These amounts are far below the recommendations set by the Centers for Disease Control.

In 2004, Michigan saw its last increase in tobacco taxes with the majority of the dollars either being absorbed in Medicaid or in education. The funding for prevention efforts such as tobacco and cancer prevention has dropped off significantly during that same time. Additionally, other tobacco products like chew and e-cigarettes have sky rocketed in usage. More and more of our youth are now trying emerging tobacco products because they’ve been told these products “aren’t as bad” as cigarettes or chew tobacco.

The other legislative issue, or ask, that we’ll address at Lobby day will be oral chemotherapy parity, or “fairness.” This issue has finally started to see some action in the Senate. Senate Bill 625 has been introduced and was brought up for a hearing in the Senate Insurance Committee last month. Senate Bill 625 ensures that patients facing cancer won’t have to pay a higher price for chemotherapy taken orally, as opposed to intravenously in a hospital.

Currently, 40 volunteers and 19 staff are registered for Michigan Lobby Day.  Registration will end on April 5.

This week, market teams were pressed to move Lobby Day recruitment to the top of their priorities.  The larger markets of Detroit and Grand Rapids have been goaled at 12 volunteers recruited while the smaller markets (Flint, Lansing, Ann Arbor) have a goal of 6 volunteers.

For more information, go to our website at http://www.acscan.org/action/mi. 

Notebook Page 10 December 2016

The legislature begins its final three weeks of session for 2016 this article we want to take a look back at what 2015 meant for CAN in Michigan.

January:

Governor veto's legislation to regulate E-Cigarettes. The Governor says in his veto statement:

"I believe the preferred way to ensure that e-cigarettes are regulated in the interest of public health is to revise the existing definition of a tobacco product to make clear that e-cigarettes (and other novel nicotine-containing vapor products) are tobacco products subject to any restrictions generally applied to tobacco products under the Youth Tobacco Act, including the minimum age law."

Efforts have been made to reintroduce the legislation that is similar to what passed and was vetoed last session, We continue to work with the legislature to create common sense legislation and regulations surrounding E-Cigarettes.

February:

Governor presented budget to the legislature, restores funding for cancer prevention and included a $100k increase for tobacco prevention.

April:

Over 90 plus cancer advocates take over the Michigan Capitol to ask that cancer and tobacco prevention be a funding priority in the state's budget. With the over 70 volunteers that joined staff at the State Capitol, almost every volunteer met with their lawmakers. Jennifer Varner received CAN's Michigan Volunteer of the Year award and Governor Snyder received Michigan's Distinguished Advocate Award with his efforts around E-Cigarettes and the Healthy Michigan Plan. Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley spoke to the crowd at the end of our busy lobby day!

June:

Legislature finalizes the budget, includes $500k for cancer prevention and $1.6 Million for tobacco prevention. Attempts were made by the Senate to move the cancer prevention line to the Health Endowment Fund; a privately controlled fund set up by the legislature and Blue Cross. If those efforts would have been successful it would've meant that the State would not fund any cancer prevention programs. This was a huge victory for us and other groups that were afraid of losing their program funding.

June-August:

Summer recess! Volunteers made in district meetings and drop by's with state and federal lawmakers, working hard to get our messages to the lawmakers. 

As a result, U.S. Senators Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow signed on as co-sponsors to S 624, the Removing Barriers to Colorectal Screening bill.

Members of Michigan’s Congressional delegation were targeted for co-sponsorship and support of the 21^st Century Cures Act. Michigan ended up with 11 members signing onto the act and all but one member of Congress voted in support.

September:

The State and Federal legislatures got back to work. In Michigan regulations for Bio-Similar products was a hot topic for the state. Creating regulations for these products could allow them to come to market in Michigan and make them available, creating lower cost options for biological products. This debate would go through until the end of October.

More than 700 volunteers and staff took part in the annual Leadership Summit and Lobby Day in Washington DC. Michigan's delegation represented the state extremely well gaining co-sponsors on critical legislation around polyp removal coverage legislation and legislation supporting palliative care training. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder was recognized at the event with the National Distinguished Advocacy Award.

October - November:

October and November saw bio-similar products at the forefront of the legislative activity. Additionally, the foundation was being set to start a large campaign issue for 2016. ACS CAN started the Prevention Michigan coalition. The coalition’s goal is to raise the tobacco taxes and use the funding to support prevention efforts in cancer and tobacco and to support the state's trauma system. We kicked off our activities with a poll and release the week of the Great American Smoke Out. The poll found 6 out of 10 Michiganders support an increase in the cigarette tax and 6 out of 10 provide more support when they know the new funding would go towards health initiatives. This shows clear support from the State for an increase in the tax and support for health in Michigan. We continue to grow our coalition to gain more support throughout the health community.

December:

December looks as if it might be quiet for our issues in Michigan. We will continue our work on Bio-Similar products, support the newly introduced oral parity legislation and continue our work around the tobacco taxes. Petitions for the Prevention Michigan campaign are being collected with a goal of 5,000 petitions collected in 2016.

We also want to take a moment to say thank you. Our volunteers, ACT Leads, State Lead Ambassador, Community Ambassadors, and others give so much of their time to help support our efforts. Without your voice, the voice of cancer would go away. Thank you for all that you do and we hope you have a great 2016.

Notebook Page 8 October 2015

September was a full month for ACS CAN in Michigan. The Michigan legislature made it's way back from its summer recess and the with national Leadership Summit and Lobby Day ahead, the ACS CAN team from Michigan was in full swing legislatively on both state and federal fronts.

In Michigan legislation was introduced to regulate bio-similar pharmaceuticals. Biologics are a classification of drugs that are commonly used for the treatment of cancer along with arthritis and other conditions. These drugs are created through a completely different process from your common pharmaceuticals like aspirin. Biologics use biologic materials to create the drug which leaves it extremely hard to recreate into a generic form. They have created drugs called bio-similars which gets extremely close to the original biologic composition but not quite.

These drugs are so new that regulations from state to state have not been created yet. ACSCAN is working with other interested parties to create legislation and regulations that would allow for the switching out of the biologic to a bio-similar but require that the pharmacist contact physician to notify them that switch has been made. The House Health Policy committee will be taking testimony on two bills dealing with the issue. We support House Bill 4812 from Representative John Bizon, a physician from Battle Creek.

Also in September ACSCAN made it's way to Washington D.C. for it's annual Leadership Summit and Lobby Day.

The Michigan delegation to the national Leadership Summit and Lobby Day was very successful this year.  We held 12 meetings with congressional offices along with meetings with Senator Gary Peters and Senator Debbie Stabenow.

Accomplishments on the Hill

After excellent meetings with our Congressional members, we were able to get verbal commitments from Rep. Dave Trott and Rep. Debbie Dingell to co-sponsor H.R. 1220, the Removing Barriers to Colorectal Screenings Act, and H.R. 3119, the Palliative Care & Hospice Education Act. Additionally, we were able to thank Senators Stabenow and Peters for co-sponsoring S. 624, the Removing Barriers to Colorectal Screenings Act.  The Senators signed onto the bills earlier this year after meeting with our volunteers in Michigan.

Advocacy Awards

Michigan was well represented at the annual national advocacy awards dinner.   Michigan ACT Lead Jennifer Varner was awarded the national ACT Lead of the Year Award for her outstanding work over the last year, and over the last few years, with advocacy and program integration.

Jennifer’s Award was highlighted in a recent news article in Midland.

http://www.ourmidland.com/news/freelander-receives-top-award-for-excellence-in-cancer-fighting-advocacy/article_f1ef6b3b-b8ac-5e51-8731-93494506e252.html

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder won the National Distinguished Advocacy Award for his support of ACS CAN priorities over the past few years.  Governor Snyder spearheaded the charge to expand Medicaid in Michigan with his Healthy Michigan Plan.  Over 600,000 Michigan workers now have access to health insurance and life-saving cancer screenings through this plan.  Additionally, Governor Snyder took a firm, and very public, stand against e-cigarettes by heeding the call of ACS CAN volunteers to veto misleading e-cigarette legislation.  This legislation would create a special class for these products and possibly prevent them from all tobacco control laws.  Governor Snyder was not able to attend but did record a video accepting the award which was played during the Leadership Summit.

Finally, Matt Phelan was awarded the Grassroots Professional of the Year award.

Lights of Hope

This year’s Lights of Hope ceremony saw significant rain, but that only showed the vigilance of cancer advocates as they ventured out into the weather to honor those that are battling cancer or have lost their battle.  There were a record 22,000 bags around the Capitol Reflecting Pool this year and thanks to some fantastic volunteers, Michigan collected around $12,000 in Lights of Hope donations!  The Lakeshore Division ranked second in Lights of Hope donations and Michigan ranked 4^th among the states.  We only trailed the mega-states, Texas, California and Florida.    Michigan volunteer Jennifer Belaire was the top online fundraiser in the nation this year for Lights of Hope collecting over $2,000 in online contributions.

Notebook Page 6 July 2015

Session has finally come to the summer recess with both chambers passing their versions of a road funding solution for Michigan. Now the question is how the state will generate the revenue to cover the crumbling road situation. This is a good time for us at ACS CAN to take a step back and review the activities of the past six months.

This year started with the governor taking a strong stance on e-cigarette regulation by vetoing the legislature's attempt to classify those products separately from tobacco products Governor Snyder wrote in his letter to the legislature:

"Michigan should not enact new state law that is not consistent with a legally-mandated approach proposed by the U.S. FDA, which is to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products. To do so will unnecessarily sow confusion, send a mixed health message to the public on a subject that is already complex and confusing to many and effectively conflict with the Sottera ruling issued in 2010 by the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia at the request of the e-cigarette industry itself."

The governor went on to say:

"I believe the preferred way to ensure that e-cigarettes are regulated in the interest of public health is to revise the existing definition of a tobacco product to make clear that e-cigarettes (and other novel nicotine-containing vapor products) are tobacco products subject to any restrictions generally applied to tobacco products under the Youth Tobacco Act, including the minimum age law."

The governor's leadership provided a strong victory against the tobacco industry's attempt to create their own harmful regulations. 

This year's budget cycle started at the end of January with Governor Snyder offering his recommendations for the state's coming fiscal year. His budget proposal appropriated $500,000 for cancer prevention and $1.6 million for tobacco prevention. This was the first time in a while that tobacco prevention has seen an increase in funding, and the cancer prevention appropriation was a win, since an executive order earlier in the year took away the $500,000 that was appropriated last year. 

This lead into our Day at the Capitol where our volunteers asked lawmakers for $1 million for both cancer prevention and tobacco cessation.  86 volunteers and staff from across the state made the trip to Lansing to speak with the Legislature We took time to highlight our Volunteer of the Year, Jennifer Varner from Freeland. Jennifer has worked tirelessly to further the mission of ACS CAN and the fight against cancer. It was only fitting that she would receive the award this year.  We also awarded Governor Rick Snyder our Distinguished Advocacy Award for 2015. His leadership and efforts surrounding the Healthy Michigan Plan (Medicaid Expansion), e-cigarettes and restoring cancer prevention funding made him worthy of the award.

All of the efforts from our Day at the Capitol were seen over the next several months as lawmakers tried to tie down the budget. The Senate was still trying to decide what to do with the prevention money as they had taken half, including all funding for cancer prevention, and moved it out of the budget. The House kept with the governor’s recommendations and left the money in the budget for prevention. Volunteers from around the state called and e-mailed the Senate Health and Human Services Committee Chair Senator Marleau to discuss why it was important to keep this funding in place. There were more than 200 contacts to Senator Marleau and other members of the conference committee. Those contacts ultimately kept prevention funding in place for this year, which was another huge victory for Michigan.

Now that the budget session is over for another eight months, we are now starting to focus on the other issues that are swirling around the Capitol. E-cigarette regulation, oral parity for chemotherapy drugs, a tobacco tax increase and legislation that would allow for medication synchronization will be on the forefront of our agenda for the fall. 

The grassroots side has been extremely active as well. Issues surrounding the one degree campaign and 21st Century Cures legislation that has been introduced by Congressman Fred Upton from St. Joseph have been creating a lot of buzz around the state.

Some of our ACSCAN Michigan ACT Leads teamed up with the Lansing Lugnuts at Cooley Law School Stadium to raise awareness of the national One Degree campaign on June 21.  The event was one of dozens nationwide where minor league baseball teams are teaming up with ACS CAN and Fans for the Cure as part of the One Degree campaign to make cancer research funding a national priority.

Our ACT leads staffed tables during the baseball game to collect petitions and raise awareness about the One Degree campaign.  ACSCAN and the Lugnuts sent a joint press release prior to the game that resulted in a great television news segment featuring ACT Lead Jennifer Varner that ran in the Lansing area on WILX.  Additionally, this exposure led to ACT Lead Beth Trierweiler being interviewed on the television and radio program Current Sports with Al Martin the next day.

ACT Lead Beth Trierweiler and Heidi Varner were honored at the game by throwing out the first pitch. This was a great awareness event for ACSCAN in Michigan and lead to a good amount of social media interaction.

Michigan Congressman Fred Upton is the lead sponsor on the 21^st Century Cures Act so Michigan has been targeted for grassroots activity.  Recently, ACSCAN pushed to secure co-sponsors for the bill.  Michigan has secured 11 out of 14 members of the Michigan delegation as co-sponsors.  This included Congressman Mike Bishop, Dave Trott and John Moolenaar who were all targeted with a social media campaign by ACSCAN volunteers that successfully pushed them to sign onto the bill.

Notebook Page 4 April 2015

SLA Phil Moilanen Starting
Lobby Day

Last week, ACS CAN and its volunteers took Lansing by storm with its annual Lobby Day at the Michigan Captiol. Cancer and tobacco prevention funding was on the minds of the volunteers and staff who took part in the annual event. ACS CAN had a total of 86 volunteers and staff from across the state made the trip to Lansing to speak with their lawmakers.

This year, our main speaker was Dr. Eden Wells from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Wells laid the foundation for the meetings with lawmakers that were slated to happen later that day with her presentation on the epidemiology of cancer throughout Michigan.

Lung cancer still continues to be the number-one killer in Michigan when it comes to cancer. Smoked tobacco usage rates continue to fall in Michigan, but with the introduction of e-cigarettes, the trend is shifting from smoked to "vaping." The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) also reported that teenagers’ use of e-cigarettes has risen over the past few years. This is causing young people to become addicted to nicotine and move on to other tobacco products.

Jennifer Varner with
Matt Phelan with her
Volunteer of the Year Award

Now it was time to know why we were in Lansing. Sarah Pagano, a cancer survivor, shared her story with the group, bringing perspective on why our work was so needed. Sarah's story of strength brought an electricity to the room, charging up those who were going to be talking to lawmakers that day.

Following Sarah’s remarks, we awarded our Volunteer of the Year Award to Jennifer Varner, an ACT lead from Freeland. Jennifer has worked tirelessly to further the mission of ACS CAN and the fight against cancer. It was only fitting that she would receive the award this year. 

Now armed with information, our volunteers were ready for the House members to join them for lunch. Lawmakers and staff filled the room to hear volunteers’ personal cancer stories and why the Legislature needed to prioritize the fight against this disease. . There was support from many House members for the increase in funding for the cancer and tobacco prevention programs in Michigan.

ACS CAN Volunteer Jay Kalisky with
Rep. Michael McCready

From there, ACS CAN members met with senators and their staff to talk about the need for cancer and tobacco prevention funding. Afterward, we met back at the Capitol to rally around why we were in Lansing that day. Joining us was Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley. He was there on behalf of the governor to support our efforts in raising the bar for cancer prevention and discuss the importance being actively engaged in the legislative process.

At the end of the day, we had an opportunity to present the ACS CAN Distinguished

Group photo with Lt. Governor Calley
after the rally.

Advocacy Award to Governor Snyder in his office. Since the governor was not able to attend the rally, he asked that we stop by for a quick chat in his office and to take a photo of the group with him receiving the award. Governor Snyder has been a great champion for ACS CAN by supporting the Healthy Michigan Plan, restoring cancer prevention funding in his budget this year and vetoing the tobacco industry's attempt to classify e-cigarettes as something other than a tobacco product. 

ACS CAN presents our Distinguished Advocate Award
to Governor Rick Snyder

Wrapping up the day, many approached us and explained how they truly enjoyed Lobby Day this year and felt it was extremely effective. We have already seen the positive effects with many lawmakers talking about cancer and tobacco prevention in Michigan.

Thank you to all of those who made the trip the Lansing to speak to your lawmakers! Your voice made a difference in the fight against cancer. Remember that there is still more to do. Contact us or watch for e-mails talking about coffee hours, or set up meetings in your hometown to meet with your lawmakers. We need to continue to keep cancer prevention on the forefront lawmakers’ minds.