Newswise — Stan Collender, a federal budget issues expert and Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) survivor, will be the keynote speaker at the 2017 AACI/CCAF Annual Meeting, October 15-17, in Washington, DC. His talk will focus in part on the impact of budget cuts to biomedical research and academic cancer centers.
Mr. Collender was one of 26 patients with advanced MCC who joined a clinical trial at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s patient-arm, the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance in Seattle, WA. He is also an expert on the U.S. budget, the congressional budget process, federal fiscal and monetary policy, Congress, and Wall Street’s response to Washington tax and spending proposals, and has worked for the House and Senate Budget Committees as well as for three U.S. representatives on the House Budget and Ways and Means Committees.
The annual meeting of AACI and the Cancer Center Administrators Forum will bring together cancer center leaders—directors and executive level administrators—with representatives from national cancer research and advocacy organizations, industry, and government health agencies.
Mr. Collender is the founder and principal writer of “Capital Gains and Games,” which the Wall Street Journal has called one of the top 25 economic and financial blogs in the U.S. and is now published by Forbes. He previously wrote “Fiscal Fitness,” in Roll Call, the influential Capitol Hill newspaper and “Budget Battles,” in nationaljournal.com. He is the author of "The Guide to the Federal Budget," one of the most assigned texts on the subject.
In addition to speaking to more than 100 organizations across the U.S. each year, Mr. Collender appears frequently on radio and television news programs and in print. He was appointed by President Clinton to the presidential commission that studied whether the U.S. should have a capital budget, and he is also an adjunct professor of public policy at Georgetown University.
In August, Mr. Collender published editorials in USA Today touting the life-saving value of clinical trials, and in Forbes magazine, arguing against a proposed massive funding cut for the National Cancer Institute.
In the USA Today piece, he spoke to the need for physicians to dedicate their time and effort to clinical trials and the enormous benefit that the trials and their professional involvement brings to patients. The article was published in light of U.S. Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) battle with a rare brain cancer. In Forbes, Mr. Collender pushed back against a budget proposed in May by the Trump administration that would reduce NCI funding by $1 billion.
Karen E. Knudsen, PhD, director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University, in Philadelphia, chaired the 2017 AACI/CCAF Annual Meeting program committee. No other program presents information on cancer research and patient care issues as they pertain to academic cancer centers and fosters discussion of common challenges and opportunities and current practices to address them. Information on the meeting, including the program and electronic registration, is available on the AACI website.
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