Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I am pleased to be joined by Senators Capito, Van Hollen, and Murkowski in introducing the Childhood Cancer Survivorship, Treatment, Access, and Research, STAR, Reauthorization Act of 2022. This legislation is an extension of ongoing bipartisan efforts in the Senate over the past decade to get us closer to the goal of hopefully one day curing cancers in children, adolescents, and young adults. Representatives McCaul, Speier, Butterfield, and Kelly are introducing companion legislation in the House of Representatives.

I first started working on this issue after meeting the Haight family from Warwick, RI, in June of 2004. Nancy and Vincent lost their son, Ben, when he was just 9 years old to neuroblastoma, a very aggressive tumor in the brain. The heart-wrenching story of Ben Haight highlights the importance of this legislation. It is my hope that one day Ben's story, and thousands of other children like him, will be one of survival. With the strong support of families like the Haights, I introduced bipartisan legislation that eventually was signed into law in 2008 as the Caroline Pryce Walker Conquer Childhood Cancer Act--the first effort to provide increased research and improved treatment options for childhood cancers.

Over the last several years, I have also had the pleasure of getting to know Grace Carey and her parents, Rebekah Ham and Russell Carey, of Providence, RI. Grace was diagnosed with brain cancer at 5 years old and stands as a proud survivor of childhood cancer. Grace and her family are powerful advocates in the fight against childhood cancer, having worked with the St. Baldrick's Foundation to support the original Childhood Cancer STAR Act, which I introduced in 2015 with Senator Capito and was signed into law in 2018.

The STAR Act took the next needed steps to advance pediatric cancer research and child-focused cancer treatments, while also improving childhood cancer surveillance and providing resources for survivors and those impacted by childhood cancer.

If a treatment is working, doctors elsewhere should know immediately. The same should happen if a treatment isn't working or if other major medical events occur during the course of a particular treatment. It is critical that doctors, nurses, and other providers are able to effectively communicate information about the disease, the treatment process, and what other health and development impacts children can expect to experience. As such, the STAR Act helped build a comprehensive children's cancer biorepository for researchers and improved surveillance of childhood cancer cases. Our reauthorization will build on these efforts and aims to make the biorepository easier for researchers to use, improving access to biospecimens.

In addition, we must do more to ensure that children survive cancer and any late effects so they can live a long, healthy, and productive life. The STAR Act enhanced research on the late effects of childhood cancers, improved collaboration among providers so that doctors are better able to care for this population as they age, and began to explore improved models of care for childhood cancer survivors. Since implementation of the STAR Act, the National Cancer Institute has awarded over $16 million in new survivorship grants. It is critical that we reauthorize the STAR Act to continue funding these vital projects.

I look forward to working with Senators Capito, Van Hollen, Murkowski, as well as Representatives McCaul, Speier, Butterfield, and Kelly, along with advocates like the St. Baldrick's Foundation, to build support for the Childhood Cancer STAR Reauthorization Act.

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