During a community meeting at Porters Chapel United Methodist Church Monday Relay For Life, some committee members, team captains and team members answered to call to become cancer advocates with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

ACS CAN is the nation’s leading cancer advocacy organization working to make cancer issues a national priority. It is a sister agency to the American Cancer Society which, because of its non-profit status, cannot lobby Congress for public policies to defeat cancer.

Community manager Scarlet Fowler recounted how when her father had cancer and was under going chemotherapy, his oral medication was extremely expensive.

“The bill for the equitable care on medication House Bill 952 passed with only three dissenting votes and then went to the Senate and passed with only two dissenting votes,” advocacy lead for the 2nd Congressional District, Pearl Carter said. “That’s almost a miracle folks.”

“The Senate did make some minor changes to the bill and it had to go back to the House to a Conferees Committee. It is there now.”

Currently patients who take a drug at home that can be injected or administered intravenously at a health care providers office pay higher costs in Mississippi.

The bill is aimed to prohibit health plans and policies, including the state health insurance plan, that cover injected, intravenously administered and oral anti-cancer medications from requiring a higher co-payment, deductible or coinsurance amount for patient administered anti-cancer medications than they require for anti-cancer medications injected or intravenously administered by a health care provider.

Also discussed at the meeting was the design for the 2015 Warren County Relay For Life t-shirts, survivors reception, luminaria sales and ways to get the community more involved.

Warren County’s Relay For Life 2015 is scheduled for Friday, May 1, from 6 p.m. to midnight at Vicksburg High School’s Memorial Stadium. The event will begin with an opening ceremony, followed by laps around the track, a solemn lighting of luminarias and conclude with a celebration of life.

The American Cancer Society is organizing the Relay For Life community event to raise money to help find a cure for cancer.

To more information on how to become involved with ACS CAN or Relay For Life contact Scarlet Fowler at scarlet.fowler@cancer.org or Tonya Nelson at tnelson@diamondjacks.com.

According to the Mississippi Department of Public Health, cancer is the second leading cause of death in Mississippi. In 2014, the American Cancer Society estimated 15,740 new cases of cancer would be diagnosed during the year in Mississippi.

In Mississippi, the most frequently diagnosed cancers include lung, prostate, breast, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers. While there are over 200 types of cancer, some of the most common are lung, bladder, prostate, breast, colorectal, liver, endometrial, kidney, leukemia, melanoma of the skin, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, pancreatic and thyroid cancers.