S655JUL29

TheWeekInCongress.com

Week Ending July 29, 2005

S 655 A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act with respect to the National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

BRIEF

Privately funded, individuals from the non-profit NFCDC (National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) function as volunteers to aid and facilitate the work of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). This bill extends their service from a two year maximum to “such a time as the private funding” ends.

The bill also increases funds for grants to the Foundation and allows for the CDC to provide facilities, utilities and services to the NFCDC.

The NFCDC was created by Congress in 1992 to raise funds to support the CDC, the Committee Report explained. The NFCDC fosters relationships between the CDC and private sector businesses and foundations to participate in various programs to improve health and safety world-wide. Since 1992 the CDC has invested $500,000 yearly in grants to the NFCDC and gotten a yearly return of around $15 million in services and aid.

This bill would allow the CDC to increase the grant amount to the NFCDC from the yearly $500,000 to $1.25 million.

Some of the projects are listed below.

Sponsor: Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)

Vote: Passed Senate amended by Unanimous Consent (July 27, 2005)

Cost to the taxpayers: “CBO estimates that enacting S. 655 would cost $500,000 in 2006 and $3.5 million over the 2006-2010 period, assuming appropriation of the necessary amounts.”

MORE INFORMATION

Some Projects involving the NFCDC, CDC and the private sector:

1. Lilly International Fellowships: A series of year-long laboratory fellowships that bring laboratorians from other countries' ministries of health to learn from CDC laboratorians and build relationships to prepare for when diseases in those countries threaten U.S. citizens.

2. Corporate/CDC Roundtable on Global Health Threats: This CDC Foundation-based roundtable brings together the CDC Director and her leadership team with representatives of 10 global corporations to develop joint approaches to detecting and responding to global health threats that threaten U.S. citizens and each corporations' bottom line. Members include top executives from such corporate leaders as GE, General Motors, IBM, UPS, Coke and Wal-Mart. In its first meeting CDC and the corporate members agreed to begin exchanging disease surveillance data that should help both CDC and the corporations do their respective jobs better.

3. Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund: After 9/11 and the anthrax attacks, the CDC Foundation established a special fund that enables CDC to respond with greater flexibility during future crises when existing government regulations might not be sufficient to enable CDC to do all it can as possible to save lives. The fund provides credit cards, made available by the Synovus Corporation, to the administrative leader of each of the 15 CDC teams that have been established to respond to national health threats.

4. Emergency Operations Center: After 9/11 CDC Foundation Board member Bernie Marcus, a co-founder of Home Depot, recognized the need for CDC to have a state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center. He donated $4 million to the CDC Foundation as a challenge grant to encourage other United States corporations to help CDC build a world-class emergency operations center `at the speed of business.' The CDC Foundation quickly contacted corporations and raised over $400,000 worth of in-kind equipment donations from corporations like Dell, Motorola, and Shure. Because of the Marcus gift and other corporate donations, CDC's new Emergency Operations Center opened 6 months early, just in time to track and combat the deadly SARS threat.

5. Management Academy for Public Health: Using $1 million each from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, CDC and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Foundation supported the establishment of a new management academy to train mid-career leaders from State and local health departments in how to manage people, data and dollars. The academy is now totally self-sufficient and continues to train hundreds of public health leaders from across the country.

6. Mobile Breast Cancer Detection: Through a multi-million dollar grant from Avon, the Foundation has purchased and placed mobile mammography screening vans to reach underserved women in multiple States across the country. Funding also supports a CDC scientist to evaluate the van placement programs and disseminate lessons learned about best practices that will help other such programs across the country be most effective and have the best chance of becoming self-supporting.

7. Field Disease Detection and Response Training Programs in Developing Countries: With privately-raised support from organizations like the World Bank, the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Ellison Medical Foundation, the CDC Foundation has enabled CDC to establish special disease detection and/or laboratory support programs in countries like Brazil, India and Kenya that will help detect and control deadly infectious diseases that pose serious threats not only in those countries, but to the United States as well.

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