Cancer advocates aim to enhance care and research during this legislative session
Hundreds of cancer doctors, researchers and advocates converge on New Orleans for the NeauxCancer Conference.
Hundreds of cancer doctors, researchers and advocates converge on New Orleans for the NeauxCancer Conference.
Hundreds of cancer doctors, researchers and advocates converge on New Orleans for the NeauxCancer Conference.
More than 700 oncologists, cancer researchers and advocates will converge on the Crescent City this week as part of the 2025 NeauxCancer Conference.
The event got its start four years ago by the Cancer Advocacy Group of Louisiana, a grassroots organization that fights for legislation and administration regulations for patients across the state.
The group has helped to pass several major bills that would alleviate the cancer burden for families who have loved ones being treated in Louisiana.
"Cancer patients shouldn't be spending all day fighting with an insurance company. We, as cancer doctors, shouldn't be spending all day fighting with an insurance company," said Dr. Marc Mantrana with CAGLA.
For instance, one measure enhances access to Biomarker testing toward precision medicine treatments for cancers where treatable genetic mutations are known.
"It was the first in the nation to essentially say, 'If there is a patient out there who has a cancer, who has a mutation, and there's a drug on the market which we know will work against that cancer, that the insurance company has to give the patient at least a chance, at least three months, to try the drug,'" said Mantrana.
Another bill protects employees who miss work to undergo medically necessary screenings.
This year, the group is lobbying for a bill that denies insurance companies the ability to discriminate against someone based on their genetics. Another would require insurance companies to pay for pancreatic enzyme pills for pancreatic cancer patients. So far, organizers said they have had a 100% success rate in getting them passed.
"You know, cancer, for good or for bad, is still, you know, the only bipartisan issue within our very Red state. It's a very bipartisan issue because everyone, whether you're Republican or Democrat or independent, you've been touched by cancer," said founder Chad Landry.
Landry was personally touched by cancer 30 years ago when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma and, after beating the disease, dedicated his life to cancer philanthropic efforts.
His latest passion project has been CAGLA and the NeauxCancer Project.
"Bring all the cancer philanthropists, all the cancer survivors, all the cancer physicians that were kind of within my network together and advocate for laws that benefit cancer patients at the state level in Baton Rouge," said Landry.
"CAGLA is one of the few organizations which allows physicians across the state to come together under one umbrella for one mission," said Mantrana.
"There's so much buy-in on common purpose and common cause. That's what I think differentiates us. And if you're there for 10 minutes, you feel it, and it's like, it doesn't it, doesn't feel like a medical oncology conference. You know, it really it really is something special," said Landry.
For more information on CAGLA and its new legislation being proposed, visit https://cag-la.org/