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Margo Feinstein (Connolly)
Dear Classmates,
I continue to volunteer as a Legislative Ambassador for ACS CAN, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. We are the cousin of American Cancer Society, and we advocate exclusively for ACS. We lobby Congress for more funding for cancer research, we fight for clean air, and we ask all levels of government leaders to improve access to affordable healthcare, including regular cancer testing and quality cancer care, when needed, for all Americans. Most of us volunteers are either dedicated survivors or people who have lost family to cancer. When we lobby legislators, we tell our powerful stories.
In California, our signature victory this past year was the passage of Senate Bill 496 (Limon). This Biomarker Testing Bill, sponsored by University of Calif and ACS CAN "will require Medi-Cal and private insurers to cover medically necessary biomarker testing--allowing more people to access effective, individualized cancer treatments." (from University of California Health, October 25, 2023) This is a big deal because the biomarker tests of tumors can cost upwards of $10,000 each, and the new coverage makes this testing more available to patients including those who could not afford it out-of-pocket. Prognosis should not be based on ability to pay or zipcode!
We are mainly volunteers whose life-saving work is dependent on donations. If you can possibly donate a multiple of $10 to support our very important advocacy work, your dollars will go far, likely extending the lives of many friends and loved ones.
I have set up my fundraising page for Lights of Hope for 2024. Many thanks to caring classmates who have donated to ACS CAN via my page in the past few years. Supporting our advocacy work is a constructive response to the sadness we all experience when we learn of a new cancer diagnosis--or loss.
In the past years, my husband and I have decorated and displayed the paper Lights of Hope bags for hundreds of donors. Many of these donors have insisted that they just wanted to support our advocacy without decorating bags. (Also, Peter is having surgery on his hand and currently cannot use his software expertise to resize the art.) This year we will forgo the bags and just hang a poster with all the names of people that donors want to honor /memorialize for the last two weeks in August in Walnut Creek, Ca. Please see my personal page for details.
Margo Connolly - Fundraising For American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (donordrive.com)
Please consider making a donation to support our very important advocacy work. Thanks for reading this far!
Wishing you and your families best of health always--
Margo (Feinstein) Connolly
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