State officials and lawmakers gathered at UK Healthcare’s Chandler Hospital in Lexington to celebrate a round of funding to the Markey Cancer Foundation.
The state awarded $500,000 from its Pediatric Cancer Research Trust Fund. That money is going towards directly supporting both future research, and the families of children getting treated for cancer.
John D’Orazio is the chief of pediatric cancer at Kentucky Children’s Hospital. He said that includes covering the hidden costs associated with treatment.
“Families might have to not go to work because their kid needs to be in the hospital or so many clinic appointments, and then they get in trouble with bills and mortgages and stuff like that,” D’Orazio said.
Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill in 2015 creating the trust fund. More than $36 million has been budgeted to the fund since.
State Representative Nick Wilson (R-Williamsburg) called the funding of cancer research a bipartisan issue.
“This is a Kentucky issue, and it's one that we are united on making sure every child has access to the very best care and the very best chance at a healthy future,” Wilson said.
D’Orazio called that funding essential. Federal cuts to grant funding from the National Institutes of Health could threaten cancer research at institutions like UK’s Markey Cancer Center.
“I'm just amazed that we have this resource, especially now where it has become much harder for cancer investigators to get funding to do cancer research, things like philanthropy or the state support have become even more important to kind of make up some ground in that space,” he said.
First Lady Britainy Beshear proclaimed September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in Kentucky during a conference Wednesday.
