About the California Breast Cancer Research Program
To find a cure for breast cancer, or better yet, to find a way to prevent the disease, we need to approach research in new ways. That's the driving philosophy behind the California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP). We push breast cancer research in new directions.
In 1993, California breast cancer activists, most of them women who had survived or currently had breast cancer, sparked the creation of our program. The activists joined forces with scientists, health care professionals, state legislators, and University of California officials to win passage of statewide legislation establishing the CBCRP.
Californians fund our program through a state tax on tobacco, a voluntary checkoff box on state income tax forms, and individual contributions.
During 2002, we awarded $14,809,103 for 67 single- and multiple-year research projects at 22 California institutions. Since 1995, we've than 500 grants to over 60 leading research institutions throughout California to investigate ideas that otherwise might not be explored.
We're honored to be the largest state-funded breast cancer research program in the country. We're also the fourth largest breast cancer research program in the world. Every breast cancer patient around the world benefits from what we do.
We fund exploration and “outside the box” thinking. We've pioneered collaborations where research scientists work side by side with women affected by breast cancer. Above all, we provide resources for the people who sit alone in labs and focus on painstaking, tedious, demanding, trial-and-error science and for people who are working in the community to lessen the impact of the disease. Their work and our support will continue, day after day, until we find a way to end the suffering caused by breast cancer.
Our Key Strategies
- Support the best, most innovative research
- Build the research talent pool by training new researchers
- Encourage creativity by financing collaboration across research fields
- Widely distribute research results to scientists, health care professionals, and the public
