Cancers receive less funding from nonprofits than other deadly diseases: study

Health researchers argue that nonprofit advocacy groups provide less funding for several common, life-threatening cancers than for other, less deadly diseases.

“While many of us would think that we would fund cancers that affect the most people in terms of the highest number of cases per year, the most deaths per year, that actually turns out to not be the case,” said Suneel Kamath, a former fellow of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

“A very large number of very common and very deadly cancers really don’t get a lot of advocacy funding from nonprofit organizations,” Mr. Kamath said, pointing to a study he led that was published this month.

The study analyzed data from 119 cancer-related nonprofit groups that brought in at least $5 million in annual revenue, an amount deemed large enough to have a national impact, from 2015-2016. It also took into account 2017 incidence rates and mortality rates for various cancer types.

Based on annual death rates, the researchers found that breast cancer, leukemia, lymphoma and pediatric cancers were well funded and brought in the largest revenue from nonprofit groups.

Breast cancer brought in the most revenue, with $460 million in nonprofit funding. Out of the 255,180 incidences of breast cancer reported in 2017, 41,070 people died from the disease, according to the study.

Leukemia, a cancer of blood-forming tissues including bone marrow, was second in revenue, with $201 million in nonprofit funding, 62,130 incidences and 24,500 deaths.

Pediatric cancers saw a $177 million in revenue, 15,270 incidences and 1,790 deaths. Lymphoma, a cancer of the body’s germ-fighting network, garnered $145 million in financial support, with 80,500 incidences and 21,210 deaths.

Conversely, gastrointestinal (pancreatic, colorectal, liver and bile duct), gynecologic (endometrial, cervical and ovarian), lung, prostate, brain, multiple myeloma (disease that forms in white blood cells) and melanoma cancers were poorly funded compared to their mortality rates.

Pancreatic cancer alone took more lives than breast cancer, despite fewer incidences, yet received about $400 million less in nonprofit funding — a total revenue of $58 million. There were 53,670 cases and 43,090 deaths from pancreatic cancer in 2017.

Of the poorly funded cancers, lung cancer had the highest number of incidences and deaths, surpassing breast cancer in frequency and mortality. There were 222,500 cases and 155,870 deaths linked to lung cancer. Only $92 million in nonprofit funding went to the disease or about 20% of the total revenue for breast cancer.

“Some data show that individual donors are largely unaware of which medical causes are well supported and which are underfunded, but if informed of these disparities, the public can attempt to compensate for them,” the study says.

The researchers note that links between cancers and high-risk behaviors such as smoking and drinking seemed to play an important role in decreased funding for stigmatized diseases such as lung and liver cancers.

J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, interim chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said looking at the links between cancers and stigmatized behaviors such as smoking is appropriate, specifically referring to lung cancer.

“They [the researchers] point out that lung cancer, which is the most common cause of cancer deaths in this country, receives a small amount of charitable contributions, voluntary contributions from the public,” Dr. Lichtenfeld said. “They attribute that to the fact that lung cancer is associated with substantial amount of stigma, which has been true in the past.

“We need to get past the stigma of associating lung cancer with tobacco use,” he said. “It’s not the only cause. There are many people who get lung cancer who have never smoked in their lives.”

While the researchers looked at nonprofit funding, they acknowledged that a limitation of their study was that most of the charitable dollars, nearly $4.6 billion, went to organizations that support all cancers rather than for specific types.

“It is unknown which diseases received this money and in what proportion,” the study says. Dr. Lichtenfeld said the study also doesn’t offer the specific amount of money spent on each type of cancer.

He added that we can’t necessarily link money raised to the impact on a particular cancer and pointed out that nonprofits with smaller amounts of funding might also focus on cancers with lower survival rates.

“We certainly need to do much more in almost every form of cancer in order to reduce the burden of suffering from the disease,” he said.

While ACS funding might not be tied to a specific cancer, Dr. Lichtenfeld said, it is directed to research some of the underlying causes for cancers in general.

The ACS will pick proposals for promising research projects and does not allocate money based on the type of disease.

Study results show the cancers with the lowest total annual revenue were sarcoma at $5.1 million, endometrial cancer at $5.4 million, cervical cancer at $5.4 million, MDS (bone marrow failure disorder) at $5.6 million, and liver and bile duct cancers at $5.8 million.