Wisconsinite Jennifer Kennedy traveled to Washington hoping to convince Congress to spend more money on life-saving medical research.

What You Need To Know

  • President Joe Biden and a divided Congress aren't seeing eye-to-eye on the FY24 federal budget

  • While Republcians are demanding spending cuts, Jennifer Kennedy hopes her story of fighting lung cancer will influence lawmakers to avoid cuts to medical care and research
  • Kennedy, as a member of the American Lung Association, is asking for spending increases for the CDC, NIH and medicaid

"I think I'm just hopeful that by bringing and sharing the facts with them, they will continue to want to fund this research and these programs that will help people like me live and have a great life," Kennedy told Spectrum News.

The Delavan, Wis. native was on Capitol Hill this week for the American Lung Association's (ALA) Lung Force Advocacy Day to lobby lawmakers to fund cancer research. It's a cause that hits close to home for her. In 2018, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.

"My family probably took it the hardest than me because I'm a nurse,” Kennedy said. “So I kinda knew how to compartmentalize it, and I knew how to process it."

It was still a shock to Kennedy, a non-smoking surgical nurse with more than two decades of experience in the field. Her late-stage cancer diagnosis had her fearing the worst.

"I was all ready for the whole chemotherapy and losing my hair and, you know, all of those really hard chemotherapy drugs that are out there," Kennedy said. "If you were to ask me four or five years ago, if I had stage four lung cancer, I wouldn't be living here or standing here today."

But treatment through a new-to-market immunotherapy drug called KEYTRUDA changed her life, she said.

"I had clean scans from stage four cancer six months later, which is a miracle. But it's because of this wonderful drug that's newly found through research that I was able to be treated with that," she said.

And that's why she traveled to Washington to plead for increased funding from the National Institute of Health. She and the ALA are calling on Congress to include $51 billion in the FY24 budget for the agency for research and new treatments. She's also asking lawmakers to appropriate $11.6 billion for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for management efforts of disesases including lung cancer. Lastly, she's hoping to persuade lawmakers enhance Medicaid coverage for lung cancer patients. 

"Those things will all help people, no matter where they're at in life, be able to live with cancer," Kennedy told Spectrum News. 

Kennedy is making her appeal for more spending as Republicans press for spending cuts. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is vowing to hold off on a deal to lift the nation's borrowing limit so the government can keep paying its bills until the persident agrees to roll back spending in his budget proposal. Republicans have not yet detailed what they want to cut but Kennedy is hopeful stories like hers will help preserve or even increase medical care and research spending.