Dr. Monty Pal and Dr. Jason Westin discuss the federal funding climate for cancer research and the persistent problem of drug shortages, two of the major concerns facing the oncology community in 2026.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Monty Pal: Hello and welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Monty Pal. I am a medical oncologist and vice chair of academic affairs at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Los Angeles.

There are always multiple challenges facing oncologists, and today, we discuss two of them that really stand out for 2026: threats to federal funding for cancer research and the persistent problem of drug shortages.

I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Jason Westin, who believes that one way to meet these challenges is to get oncologists more involved in advocacy, and he will share some strategies to help us meet this moment in oncology.

Dr. Westin is a professor in the Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, but he actually wears a lot of hats within ASCO. He is a member of the Board of Directors and has also previously served as chair of ASCO's Government Relations Committee. And he is also one of the inaugural members of ASCO's Political Action Committee, or PAC. He has testified before Congress about drug shortages and many other issues.

Dr. Westin, I am really excited to have you on the podcast today and dive into some of these elements that will really impact our community in 2026. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Dr. Jason Westin: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Monty Pal: You've had such a range of experience. I already alluded to you testifying before Congress. You've actually run for office before. You wear so many different hats. I'm used to checking my PubMed every other day and seeing a new paper out from you and your group, and you publish in the New England Journal [of Medicine] on practice-setting standards and the diseases that you treat. But you've also done all this work in the domain of advocacy. I can't imagine that balancing that is easy. What has sort of motivated you on the advocacy front?

Dr. Jason Westin: Advocacy to me is another way to apply our skills and help more people than just those that you're sitting across from at the time. Clinical research, of course, is a tool to try and take what we know and apply it more broadly to people that you'll never meet. And advocacy, I think, can do the same thing, where you can have a conversation with a lawmaker, you can advocate for a position, and that hopefully will help thousands or maybe even more people down the road who you'd never get to directly interact with. And so, I think it's a force multiplier in the same way that research can be. And so, I think advocacy is a wonderful part of how doctors care for our patients. And it's something that is often difficult to know where to start, but once people get into advocacy, they can see that the power, the rewarding nature of it is attractive, and most people, once they get going, continue with that through the rest of their career.

Dr. Monty Pal: So, I'll ask you to expand on that a little bit. We have a lot of our younger ASCO members listening to this podcast, folks that are just starting out their careers in clinical practice or academia. Where does that journey begin? How do you get to the point that you're testifying in front of Congress and taking on these bigger sort of stances for the oncology community?

Dr. Jason Westin: Yeah, with anything in medicine and in our careers, you have to start somewhere. And often you start with baby steps before you get in front of a panel of senators or other high-profile engagement opportunities. But often the first setting for junior colleagues to be engaged is doing things – we call them "Hill Days" – but basically being involved in kind of low-stakes meetings where you're with a group of peers, some of whom have done this multiple times before, and can get engaged talking to members of representatives' offices, and doing so in a way where it's a natural conversation that you're telling a story about a patient in your clinic, or that you're telling a personal experience from a policy that impacted your ability to deliver optimal care.

It sounds stressful, but once you're doing it, it's not stressful. It's actually kind of fun. And it's a way that you can get comfort and skill with a group of peers who are there and able to help you. And ASCO has a number of ways to do that, both at the federal level, there's the Hill Day where we each April have several hundred ASCO members travel to Capitol Hill. There's also state engagement that can be done, so-called visiting at home, when representatives from the U.S. Congress or from state legislators are back in district. You can meet with your own representatives on behalf of yourself, on behalf of your organization, and advocate for policies in a way that can be beneficial to your patients.

But those initial meetings that are in the office often they're low stakes because you could be meeting not with the representative but with their staff. And that staff sometimes is as young or even younger than our junior colleagues. These sometimes can be people in their 20s, but they're often extremely knowledgeable, extremely approachable, and are used to dealing with people who are new to advocacy. But they actually help make decisions within the office. So it's not a waste of time. It's actually a super useful way to engage. So, it's that first step of anything in life. The activation energy is always high to do something new. But I'd encourage people who are listening to this podcast already having some level of interest about it to explore ways that they could engage more.

Dr. Monty Pal: You know, I have to tell you, I'm going to riff on what you just said for a second. ASCO couldn't make it any easier, I think, for folks to participate and get involved. So, if you're listening to this and scratching your head and thinking, "Well, where do I begin? How do I actually sign on for that meeting with a local representative?" Go to the ASCO ACT Network website. And I'll actually talk to our producer, Geraldine, to make sure we've got a link to that somewhere associated with this podcast after it's published, Jason, but I actually keep that on my browser and it's super easy. I check in there every now and then and see if there's any new policy or legislation that ASCO, you know, is sort of taking a stance on, and it gives me some fodder for conversation with my local representatives too. I mean, it's just an awesome, awesome vehicle.

I'm going to segue right from there right to the issues. So, you and I are both at academic centers. You know, I think this is something that really pervades academia and enters into implications for general clinical practice. There's been this, you know, massive sort of proposal for decreased funding to the NCI and to the NIH and so forth. Tell us what ASCO is doing in that regard, and tell us perhaps how our community can help.

Dr. Jason Westin: We live in interesting times, and I think that may be an understatement x 100. But obviously investments in research are things that when you're at an academic center, you see and feel that as part of your daily life. Members of Congress need to be reminded of that because there's a lot of other competing interests out there besides investing in the future through research. And being an elected representative is a hard job. That is something where you have to make difficult choices to support this, and that may mean not supporting that. And there's lots of good things where our tax dollars could be spent. And so, I'm sympathetic to the idea that there's not unlimited resources.

However, ASCO has done an excellent job, and ASCO members have led the charge on this, of stating what research does, what is the benefit of research, and therefore why should this matter to elected representatives, to their staff, and to those people that they're elected to serve. And ASCO has led with a targeted campaign to basically have that message be conveyed at every opportunity to elected representatives. And each year on Hill Day, one of the asks that we have is to continue to support research: the NCI, NIH, ARPA-H, these are things that are always in the asks to make sure that there's appropriate funding.

But effectively playing offense by saying, "It's not just a number on a sheet of paper, this is what it means to patients. This is what it means to potentially your loved ones in the future if you are in the opposite situation where you're not on the legislative side, but you're in the office receiving a diagnosis or receiving a difficult piece of news." We only have the tools we have now because of research, and each breakthrough has been years in the making and countless hours spent funded through the engine of innovation: clinical research and translational research. And so ASCO continues to beat that drum.

You mentioned earlier the ACT Network. Just to bring that back again is a very useful, very easy tool to communicate to your elected representatives. When you sign up on the ASCO ACT website, you get emails periodically, not too much, but periodically get emails of, "This is a way you can engage with your lawmakers to speak up for this." And as you said, Monty, they make it as easy as possible. You ...