Who We Are & What We Do
The Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP) was created by the California Breast Cancer Act of 1993, sponsored by Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman. Its mission is to reduce the human and economic costs of breast cancer in California by funding innovative and creative research into the cause, cure, treatment, prevention and earlier detection of breast cancer, and into finding ways to eliminate cultural and economic barriers to earlier detection and treatment. To be eligible for grant awards, research projects must complement, rather than duplicate, research underwritten by other agencies.
"Our program was born through the collective efforts of individuals & 151 breast cancer survivors and advocates, clinicians, scientists, industry representatives and responsive elected officials," says BCRP Coordinator Marion H.E. Kavanaugh-Lynch, M.D., M.P.H.
"It's a model of how individual women and men who are committed to eliminating this devastating disease can join together and make a real impact."
The Act and enabling legislation increased the cigarette tax by two cents per pack and allocated 45% of the revenue to BCRP. (Fifty percent of the two-cent increase is allocated to the Department of Health Services to provide early detection services to underinsured women, and the remaining five percent to theState Cancer Registry.) Thanks to those pennies, California is currently investing $19 million in the battle to conquer breast cancer, through research grants awarded to investigators around the state.
Managed by the University of California, the state's official research arm, BCRP is administratively housed in the Office of the President, Health Affairs.
The staff manages all programmatic and fiscal aspects of the grant process, aided by other units within the Office of the President. Advice, direction and oversight are provided by the Breast Cancer Research Council (BCRC), whose members develop research priorities, evaluation procedures and award mechanisms, and make final recommendations on grants to be funded.
"Breast cancer is not just a personal tragedy," said Assemblywoman Friedman, "it's a public health disaster. Until the Breast Cancer Act, the state of California had spent not one penny for research on a disease that kills as many Americans each year as were killed in the entire Vietnam war.
"Now that research grants created by the act are being awarded, I hope that, with lots of hard work and some luck, we will have contributed to finding a breast cancer cure."
The BCRP has now launched its second funding cycle, for
which approximately $14 million has been appropriated and is available.
