Urgent: Contact Your Congressional Reps about Migraine Treatment Funding!

Below is the text of an email from the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy (AHDA, link left also) sent out today. If you have not already signed up for their email alerts, what are your waiting for?? (Link on left also.)

Teri Robert PhD, the USAs Number One Migraine Disease and Headache Patient Advocate along with Megan Oltman of Free My Brain From Migraine Pain, one of my Migraine blogging compatriots (all three links at left also), met with members of Congress last week to discuss the serious issue of Migraine treatments. None of the treatments currently available are harmless and there is no cure for Migraine, a genetic disease that has made Yours Truly disabled and retired that way--for now.

It is WAY PAST TIME for the National Institutes of Health to properly fund research into safe and effective Migraine Disease treatments. If you think Migraine is a non-issue since the advent of triptans then read this about Imitrex, the flagship triptan, and tell me if you still feel that way.

I've sent my email. Click on the link and send yours today. The AHDA website will automatically determine who your Representatives are based on your zipcode so you won't even have to try to look it up. You'll have a place to add your own information and message to your Representative and the AHDH has generously programmed thousands of characters, so you'll have room.

I'm battling a Migraine attack right now. I've staved off treating it with meds for two days but the time has come, the Walrus said. I hope what I've written makes sense and that all the links work but forgive if they don't and please let me know.

I borrowed a computer to make this urgent post. Now, I'm going to take meds, crawl underneath rocks, and pray. Yeah, with all my crystal and mineral specimens on me, I feel like a reptile. :3



From: Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy
Subject: We Need Your Help
Date: Mar 2, 2009 2:12 PM
One voice can make all the difference!
We Need Your Help
It's time to ask the House support fair funding for research on headache disorders

Take Action!
Ask your member of the House to sign the "Obey/Tiahrt letter."

Dear AHDA advocates -

The moment has arrived for you to contact your members of the US House of Representatives to take action for increasing National Institutes of Health (NIH) research on headache disorders.

Please go to the AHDA website as soon as possible to send strong but focused emails to your members of the House with just a few clicks. (http://www.allianceforheadacheadvocacy.org/)

Publicly funded research is the key to fundamental discoveries that accelerate drug development and expand the field of headache medicine. However, the NIH has never provided adequate funding for research on headache disorders. Currently, NIH expenditures for headache research are less than $13M annually, comprising less than 0.05% of the NIH budget. Meanwhile, headache disorders cost more than $31B in the US annually, including 9% of lost labor productivity, and result in more lost years of healthy life every year than epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and ovarian cancer combined. As a consequence of insufficient research, only two innovative drugs have received FDA approval for migraine treatment in the past fifty years.

We are requesting that the US House and the Senate each include language that prioritizes research on headache disorders with the fiscal year 2010 appropriations bills for the NIH. At this particular time, we need our members of the House to sign a "Dear Colleague" letter that they received last week.

The AHDA website simplifies contacting your members of the House with the right message at the right time. You will also be able to add a brief personal statement to your members of the Houseif you wish.

The more emails that members of the House receive from constituents right now, the more likely they will act upon this issue. You CAN make a difference. Let Congress know you care now.

Also, right now please forward this email to everyone you know that also cares about someone suffering from migraine or other headache disorders.

Through collective advocacy we will improve the care for individuals with headache disorders. Thanks very much for your help.

Best regards to you all,

Robert Shapiro, MD, PhD; Burlington, Vermont
William Young, MD; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Brad Klein, MD, MBA; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Teri Robert, PhD; Washington, West Virginia






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