Amending Public Health Service Act with respect to National Foundation for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention

AMENDING PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE ACT WITH RESPECT TO NATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION

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Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would like to thank Ranking Member Dingell and our ranking member of the subcommittee, Sherrod Brown, for allowing me to manage the bill.

I rise in support of this legislation which the Energy and Commerce Committee reported out last month. This legislation makes minor changes in the National Foundation for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so that it can have the flexibility it needs to build on its success to date.

First authorized by Congress in 1992, the CDC Foundation is an excellent example of a public-private partnership that can yield tremendous results with minimal taxpayer investment.

Specifically, the Foundation has utilized $500,000 in Federal funding to bring in approximately $15 million in private sector dollars each year. This amounts to a 30-to-1 return on CDC's annual investment in the Foundation.

With this funding, the CDC Foundation has implemented more than 100 health and safety programs in over 30 countries. These programs stretch across the world and reach all levels of society from corporate leaders and health care professionals to patients.

For example, the Foundation has addressed global health concerns with the Round Table on Global Health Threats, which brought global government and corporate leaders together to develop ways to better detect global health threats.

The Foundation has also been instrumental in the establishment of a health leadership academy that provides management training for midcareer health care professionals from local and State health departments.

The CDC Foundation has also improved the health of underserved women here at home through its mobile mammogram van. This partnership with Avon has put mobile vans on the ground in rural and underserved communities. There is no question that these vans have saved the lives of American women who face significant barriers to health care and whose cancer would have most likely gone undetected until it was too late.

What's more, the CDC has now assigned a scientist to the program to evaluate the program and determine the best practices for similar programs around the country.

This bill makes minor changes in the Foundation's authorization that will have a major impact on the Foundation's ability to leverage its resources and maximize the outcome. For example, the bill increases the authorization levels the CDC director can put toward the Foundation. This change will provide the CDC director with the flexibility to increase CDC's investment in the Foundation, but not at additional taxpayer expense, since the CDC's contribution to the Foundation is not appropriated, but comes from the director's budget.

The bill would also allow for better alignment of private fellowships and Foundation activities. Currently, fellows may be assigned to the Foundation program for 2 years, despite the program's duration of 3 to 4. This small change will allow fellows to remain throughout the program's duration, providing the program with invaluable institutional memory and increased efficiency, which will no doubt improve the outcomes.

This is a commonsense bill that will improve the public-private partnerships that are so important to the current success of the CDC Foundation.

I encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill and ensure we build on this success in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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