We Can HEAL Together: Legislation & Issues

Join us in harnessing your Power of One to make your voice heard and BE THE CHANGE! Let’s HEAL together and take action today on these issues and more.

Clinical Trials Modernization Act

Clinical trials are how we push medical progress forward and find better treatments and cures yet for too long, systemic barriers and current rules have made it difficult for the very patients who stand to benefit most to participate in trials: young women, Black women, women of color, rural
residents, and those with less money. When these communities are left out of trials, the science is weaker, and the patients who rely on it suffer.

VIEW THE CLINICAL TRIAL MODERNIZATION ACT PAGE
SCREENS Act and TNBC Increased Funding
Screening for Communities to Receive Early and Equitable Needed Services (SCREENS) for Cancer Act (H.R. 2381/S. 1866)

The National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP) is a critical safety-net program that provides breast and cervical cancer education, screening, and diagnostic services for underserved populations who are low-income, uninsured and underinsured who do not qualify for Medicaid. The program has a proven record of cancer detection and provides public education, outreach, patient navigation, and care coordination to increase breast cancer screening rates and reach these underserved populations.The Screening for Communities to Receive Early and Equitable Needed Services (SCREENS) for Cancer Act reauthorizes and modernizes the NBCCEDP by:

Reauthorizing Funding: It continues the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (NBCCEDP) from 2026 through 2030.

Modernizing the Program: It updates the program’s goals to include prevention (not just detection), reducing disparities, and improving equitable access to screenings.

Expanding Support Services: It explicitly allows funding to be used for patient navigation, care coordination, and implementing strategies proven to increase screening rates.

Creating a Study: It requires a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study to identify barriers and assess the program’s reach.

NBCCEDP is one of the only programs that serve these under-resourced, underserved communities throughout the country, as well as populations facing high disparities and morbidities from breast cancer. This piece of legislation is an important step toward ensuring that more women receive access to essential screening services before it is too late.

Click here for the SCREENS Act factsheet.

Take action with us today to let members of congress know this is an important issue to you by sending a letter to your representative asking to support the SCREENS Act to reauthorize the NBCEEDP!

CLICK HERE
Comprehensive Cancer Survivorship Act #APlan4All
Comprehensive Cancer Survivorship Act #APlan4All

Approximately 17 million Americans are cancer survivors – by 2030, there will be approximately 22 million.

Yet gaps in cancer survivorship care and disparities in cancer survivors’ health and quality of life persist.

To advance education and access to survivorship care plans for all healthcare providers and patients, including those living with metastatic cancer, Tigerlily Foundation continues to work closely with Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and support the Comprehensive Cancer Survivorship Act (CCSA).

Together, we will advance policy to bridge gaps and create standardized models for survivorship care plans to ensure all people diagnosed with cancer have a quality survivorship plan.

Defining Survivorship

A cancer survivor is any individual with a history of cancer, from the time of diagnosis through the rest of their life.

A survivorship care is the medical care of an individual who has completed their treatment for cancer or of an individual who is undergoing maintenance treatment for cancer.

Disparities in Survivorship Care

Cancer survivors face complex physical, emotional, psychosocial, and neurological challenges that persist beyond diagnosis and the start of treatment, arising months and years after treatment.

Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) survivors have significantly lower health-related quality of life measures compared to their white counterparts.

Clinicians, researchers, and insurers have limited agreement on services and the point when survivorship care begins.

Cancer survivors, and their health care providers, face many difficulties understanding and coordinating the transition between primary and specialty care – resulting in disjointed and infrequent communication and treatment.

Together we are calling on policymakers to improve cancer survivors’ health and quality of life by:

Ensuring cancer patients, their families, and health care providers can access survivorship care plans to avoid additional health-related or financial hardships.

Creating comprehensive, coordinated, and forward-thinking cancer survivorship programs across Federal agencies.

» Click here to see the CCSA Fact Sheet

» Click here to send a letter to your representative to ask them to support the Comprehensive Cancer Survivorship Act
Increasing Access to Genetic Screening and Preventative Services

Reducing Hereditary Cancer Act (H.R.4110 / S.3656)

Tigerlily Foundation has joined our partners at FORCE (Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered) to support the Reducing Hereditary Cancer Act. Currently, Medicare patients face barriers to genetic testing and recommended preventive care for those who carry genetic mutations. Those with Medicare coverage have access to cancer screening services such as clinical breast exams, mammograms and pelvic exams, however critical genetic testing is only covered for those already diagnosed with cancer, regardless of family cancer history or a known genetic mutation in the family. Genetic testing for a hereditary predisposition to breast and other cancers is the standard-of-care and widely recognized as medically necessary for individuals with certain personal or family histories of the disease, yet if an individual who is eligible and recommended to have genetic testing has Medicare and has not already been diagnosed with cancer, they do not have access to this test. Knowledge of an inherited genetic mutation (i.e. BRCA1, BRCA2, ATM, CHK2, PTEN, etc.) can be life-saving for an individual and their family members. Furthermore, if an individual pays out-of-pocket for testing and is found to have an inherited genetic mutation associated with increased breast cancer risk, the medically necessary high-risk cancer screenings and/or risk-reducing interventions are NOT covered either.

The Reducing Hereditary Cancer Act aims to modify the current Medicare statutes to close this gap in access by providing coverage for genetic testing for those with a known hereditary cancer mutation in their family and those with a personal or family history suspicious for hereditary cancer as well as provide access to increased cancer screening and risk-reducing surgeries as recommended for those with inherited genetic mutations (for example, preventative removal of breasts or ovaries).

Closing these gaps in coverage is especially important for Patients of Color as an abundance of research shows disparities in access to genetic counseling and testing among underserved racial and ethnic minorities. These inequities in access lead to disparities in cancer screening, prevention and early detection, which in turn can contribute to the existing disparities in breast cancer mortality rates for Black women. Implementation of the Reducing Hereditary Cancer Act would bring us one step closer to achieving health equity and would save the lives of many living with increased risk of breast cancer due to inherited genetic mutations.
TNBC Research & Education Act
Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Research & Education Act of 2025, H.R. 1806

In the U.S., breast cancer disproportionately affects women of color. Black women are 41% more likely to die of breast cancer than white women and have a 39% higher risk of recurrence.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which accounts for up to 20% of new breast cancers, is also more common in Black women, young women and Hispanic women.

TNBC is hard to treat, is often diagnosed at later stages, and is more likely to spread to other parts of the body than other types of breast cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, individuals diagnosed with metastatic TNBC have just a 12% chance of surviving longer than five years, and there is a higher chance of it recurring compared to other types of breast cancer.

One of the most difficult hurdles is that we don’t know much about TNBC. The name of the subtype itself speaks to that; it doesn’t have estrogen or progesterone receptors and makes too little or none of the HER2 protein. It lacks these three known designations of breast cancer and so we call it “triple-negative.” Because the cancer cells don’t have these proteins, hormone therapy and drugs that target HER2 are not effective, so chemotherapy is still the main systemic treatment option.

In other words, therapies are very limited for TNBC. We need to know more. We need to do more research on unlocking the unknowns of TNBC. And we need to be better educated about who is at higher risk of TNBC.

The TNBC Research & Education Act seeks to address these disparities and enhance efforts to combat TNBC by focusing on three key areas:

Increased Research Funding: The bill would allocate additional resources for TNBC research through the National Institutes of Health and Office of Research on Women’s Health, facilitating a better understanding of its underlying biology, risk factors, and potential therapeutic targets. This funding would enable researchers to develop innovative treatment strategies tailored specifically to TNBC and expedite the discovery of more effective therapies to save more lives.

Awareness and Education Campaigns: The bill also aims to raise public awareness through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about TNBC, including its signs, symptoms, and risk factors, particularly among high-risk populations. Educational initiatives would empower individuals to recognize early warning signs and seek timely medical attention, potentially leading to earlier diagnoses and improved outcomes.

Health Care Provider Education Campaigns: The bill lastly would ensure that health care providers remain informed on current TNBC information and education, including the elevated risk for minority women to develop triple-negative breast cancer and the range of available options for the treatment of symptomatic triple-negative breast cancer.

TAKE ACTION WITH US TODAY TO LET MEMBERS OF CONGRESS KNOW THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE TO YOU BY SENDING A LETTER TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVE ASKING TO SUPPORT THE TNBC RESEARCH & EDUCATION ACT!

CLICK HERE
Access to Biomarker Testing

We Can HEAL Together: Legislation & Issues

We Can HEAL Together: Legislation & Issues

Take action with us today to let members of congress know this is an important issue to you by sending a letter to your representative asking to support the SCREENS Act to reauthorize the NBCEEDP!

CLICK HERE

Comprehensive Cancer Survivorship Act #APlan4All

Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Research & Education Act of 2025, H.R. 1806

TAKE ACTION WITH US TODAY TO LET MEMBERS OF CONGRESS KNOW THIS IS AN IMPORTANT ISSUE TO YOU BY SENDING A LETTER TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVE ASKING TO SUPPORT THE TNBC RESEARCH & EDUCATION ACT!

CLICK HERE

Coming soon