Senate Threatening to Freeze Diabetes Funding

Here’s an announcement from the ADA:

Next week the Senate will be voting on an amendment (SA 3453), sponsored by Senators Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO), that would freeze all discretionary funding for the next four years. This may put diabetes funding at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at risk. The amendment is being offered to legislation that would reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and is completely unrelated to research and prevention.

Diabetes is one of this nation’s most prevalent, debilitating, deadly and costly diseases and it continues to grow at an alarming rate. In fact, if things don’t change, one in three children – and one in two minority children – born today will face a future with diabetes.

Please ask the Senate to vote against Senate Amendment 3453.

Additional federal resources are needed to address the millions of people already affected by diabetes. Every 24 hours, 4,320 new cases of diabetes will be diagnosed. That means more than 6 million people will be diagnosed with diabetes over the next four years!

Diabetes funding at NIH enables researchers to get a better understanding of diabetes that may lead to breakthrough cures and treatments for diabetes and its complications. The funding for CDC provides resources to translate that science into practice in a way that can be used in local communities.

The diabetes epidemic in our country is on the rise. To freeze this funding would put the efforts by the NIH and the CDC to cure, prevent and control diabetes in jeopardy for the millions of Americans living with and at risk for diabetes.

Please ask your Senators to vote against the Sessions-McCaskill Amendment.

Thank you for your help in the fight to Stop Diabetes.

Image: sxc.hu.