REACH THE DAY 2009

In 2008, Congress passed The Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act, landmark legislation that holds the promise of $30 million dedicated to childhood cancer research. We have come a great distance but we won’t stop – not until every child with cancer can be guaranteed a cure.

REACH THE DAY 2009 is our opportunity to make sure that this bill gets fully funded and that childhood cancer research continues to receive Congressional appropriations. For the ninth year in a row, parents, patients, survivors and others touched by childhood cancer are invited to come to Washington, DC on June 22-23, 2009. The event provides an opportunity for those who care about children with cancer, to share their story with our nation’s leaders, and to impress upon them that critical funding for childhood cancer research is needed.

We need to speak for the 12,500 children who will be diagnosed with cancer this year, and all who will be in the years to come. We need to speak for the more than a quarter of a million children in the United States who are now living with cancer, many of whom suffer from long-term, side-effects of their therapies because we have not yet found better ways to cure them.

And most of all, we speak for all those children who live forever in our hearts.