About the California Breast Cancer Research Program
Making California a Leader among States
In 1993, California breast cancer activists joined forces with scientists, clinicians, state legislators, and University of California officials to propel the state into national leadership for breast cancer research.
The activists, most of them women who had survived or currently had breast cancer, were impatient with the slow pace of progress against the disease. With their allies, they wrote and won passage of statewide legislation to push breast cancer research in new, creative directions. The California Breast Cancer Act, sponsored by then-Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman, raised the tobacco tax by two cents a pack, with 45 percent of the proceeds going to the California Breast Cancer Research Program (CBCRP). The CBCRP has since become the largest state-funded breast cancer research effort in the nation, and the fourth largest funder of breast cancer research in the world.
The mission of the CBCRP is to eliminate breast cancer by leading innovation in research, communication, and collaboration among California’s lay and scientific communities.
The CBCRP has provided a total of more than $174 million in research funds since 1993. In 2006, the CBCRP awarded $9.8 million for 53 single- and multiple-year research projects at 34 California institutions.
The CBCRP is funded primarily by the tobacco tax, a steadily declining source of revenue due to decreasing consumption of tobacco products. This funding is supplemented with taxpayer donations selected on state income tax returns. The CBCRP also receives private contributions.
Pushing the Research Boundaries
During its thirteen-year history, the CBCRP has established a record for filling gaps not covered by other research funders, jump-starting new areas of research, and fostering new types of collaboration. Now the Program is challenging itself to find ways to focus Program resources on questions that could change the face of breast cancer research.
The CBCRP's five-year Special Research Initiatives will investigate the role of the environment in breast cancer and the reasons why breast cancer affects some groups of Californians more than others. The CBCRP is investing 30 percent of its funds in these initiatives. During 2006, to assure that the research will have the most impact on breast cancer and to avoid duplication, the CBCRP drafted a review of previous research in the areas to be covered under the Special Research Initiatives. This year, the CBCRP also recruited experts of national stature to two leadership bodies for this research effort. The 6-member steering committee will guide the Special Research Initiatives. The 30-member strategy team will develop specific recommendations for research to be funded. During 2007, the public will have an opportunity to help shape the Special Research Initiatives through a series statewide stakeholder town hall meetings and through comments on a special section of the CBCRP Web site. The Special Research Initiatives are discussed more fully in the section of this report titled “The CBCRP’s Strategy for Funding Research.”
A Structure That Encourages Public Input
The CBCRP’s structure has set a standard for community involvement that has inspired similar changes in other research funding agencies around the nation. Through example, the CBCRP is encouraging other agencies to include community advocates in the review of research proposals and to involve community members in the design and conduct of research. Breast cancer advocates play a leading role in every aspect of the CBCRP’s work, from setting research priorities to recommending grants for funding to getting out the word about research results.
The CBCRP is under the direction of the University of California, Office of the President, in Oakland, with a staff managing the solicitation, review, award, and oversight of grants.
The CBCRP’s 16-member advisory Breast Cancer Research Council includes scientists, clinicians, representatives of industry and nonprofit health organizations, and breast cancer advocates. The council provides vision, sets research priorities, and determines how the CBCRP invests its funds in research. It also conducts one of two reviews that every proposal must pass to receive funding. The council reviews research proposals for relevance to the CBCRP’s goals, while teams of research scientists and breast cancer advocates from outside California also review all proposals for scientific merit.
The following ten criteria are used by the Breast Cancer Research Council to set priorities that push the boundaries of research.
- The research helps form and nurture collaboration among California scientists, clinicians, advocates, community members, and others.
- The research helps recruit, retain, and develop high-quality California-based investigators who engage in breast cancer research.
- The research embodies innovative ideas (i.e., new drugs, new strategies, new paradigms).
- The research addresses the public health outcomes of prevention, earliest detection, effective treatments, and quality of life.
- The research leads quickly to more effective products, technologies, or interventions and their application/delivery to Californians.
- The research helps drive policy in both the private and public sectors on breast cancer in California.
- The research reduces disparities and/or addresses the needs of the underserved in California.
- The research complements, builds on, feeds into, but does not duplicate the research programs of other organizations interested in breast cancer.
- The research addresses a breast cancer need that is specific but not necessarily unique to the burden of breast cancer in California.
- The research is responsive to the perceived breast cancer research needs and expectations of the CBCRP as identified by scientists and the public in California.
In addition, all Californians concerned about breast cancer have opportunities to help set the research agenda via several avenues of feedback created by the Program. The Program’s biennial research symposia bring the scientific and treatment communities into dialog with a broader range of the public than is common at such conferences. Each symposium includes a session for members of the public to provide feedback on the Program’s work and suggest research priorities. The CBCRP also encourages public review of its funded research through its Advances in Breast Cancer Research report and the Program’s Web site (www.CABreastCancer.org), where members of the public can leave written comments.
By bringing the research, advocacy, and treatment communities into closer collaboration, the California Breast Cancer Research Program pushes the boundaries of research, mobilizing greater creativity and resources, toward decreasing—and ending—the suffering and death caused by breast cancer.
