Rock Stars of Science, a new public service campaign underwritten by Geoffrey Beene Gives Back, is bringing rock stars together with some of the nation’s leading medical researchers to advocate for greater research funding.

Rock S.O.S aims to bridge the recognition gap for Americans and scientists.

Sheryl Crow, Josh Groban, Seal, will.i.am and Joe Perry are working to accelerate science – from research bench to bedside.

Their motto: From cause to cure in our time.

You can join with the Rock Stars and advocated for increased research funding by signing their petition here.

In June 2009 the California Healthcare Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report, The National Institutes of Health: Fueling Healthcare Innovation in California, urging legislators to support increased funding for the National Institutes of Health.

The report called NIH “the backbone of the biomedical industry” in California, which employs more than 267,000 people in high wage jobs.

According to the report:

Without a sustained commitment of funding, scientists, academicians and leaders in the biomedical industry in California profiled in the report fear the biomedical ecosystem in California, made up of universities, research institutions and industry, will lose its capacity to produce the next generation of inventions to treat and cure disease.

Today’s medical advances in cancer, HIV/AIDS and cardiovascular and infectious diseases are the products of basic scientific research that took place decades ago, largely funded by governmental grants from NIH, said David Gollaher, Ph.D., California Healthcare Institute’s president and chief executive officer.

The U.S. has to make a commitment to provide sustained funding to NIH so that the next generation of innovations that will improve public health come to fruition, or we risk not only America’s competitiveness, but global health.

You can download the full report here.

On July 8, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives will begin consideration of the appropriations bill for the FY 2010 budget for the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Contol, National Science Foundation and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

You can contact your Member of Congress through the Research!America web site.

Or better yet, write or call your Representative’s local office.

A coalition of the nation’s medical schools, teaching hospitals, universities, patient groups, research companies and organizations has launched a new effort to urge Congress to enact significant, annual increases in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s primary sponsor of medical research.

The new campaign will use print, radio and online advertising, as well as electronic and social media to raise public awareness of the critical need for sustained, real growth in federal funding for medical research.

A new Web site also provides information about the importance of NIH-supported research and makes it easy for the public to send a message to Congress.

The campaign is sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the Johns Hopkins University, and more than 40 other supporting organizations.

The list of organizations may be viewed here.

“Despite considerable progress in new treatments and therapies, too many people continue to struggle daily with diseases that have no cure, like diabetes, mental illness, and Alzheimer’s disease,” said Edward D. Miller, M.D., dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine. “Medical research is the beginning of hope for millions of Americans, and one of the best investments we can make in our future.”

NIH-funded research has pioneered many of the advances that today enable Americans to live longer and healthier lives. Over the past 30 years, there has been a 50 percent decline in deaths from heart disease and a 60 percent decrease in deaths from stroke. And, while once four out of five children with leukemia died, today four out of five survive.

More recently, NIH-funded advances have led to a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer; new, targeted therapies for many types of cancer; the identification of genetic markers for mental illness; improved treatments for asthma; and the near-elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission.

“Unfortunately, ‘boom and bust’ cycles of support in recent years have resulted in delayed hope for patients and their families and lost opportunities for science,” said Darrell G. Kirch, M.D., president and CEO of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

“While the recent infusion of federal funds for NIH in the economic recovery package is welcome news, the NIH budget still declined 11 percent after inflation between 2003 and 2009. It is essential that we renew our national commitment to sustained, real growth in NIH funding over the long term.”

There’s a scientific revolution taking place.

Past investments in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have not only wiped out diseases that killed our grandparents, but they have also led us to the brink of new discoveries that will make our children and grandchildren free from the diseases that we still suffer and fear.

These breakthroughs can come because of a unique moment in the history of science.  The mapping of the human genome and advances in our understanding of the way life works have pushed us into a new phase of biological study.

Today, scientists know exactly where to look to find cures.  They just need the funding to get there.

Indeed, the 21st century may belong to the life sciences.

Just as the industrial revolution fundamentally transformed the 19th century, and the physics and information technology revolution made the United States the world’s leading economic power at the end of the 20th century, the coming biomedical revolution will be critical to economic leadership and well-being in the 21st century.

As the development of the transistor led to the microprocessor, the Internet and a revolution in communications, so, too, research in medical labs will not only cure diseases in the human body, but will lead to other discoveries in life sciences that can help improve the human condition more generally.

We already see this cross-innovation taking place in the way the study of living things is leading to breakthroughs in new, organic ways to produce clean energy that protect the climate.

That’s why more than twenty of the nation’s leading research institutions, and health and patient advocates have united behind a single purpose: to call upon the United States to make a new commitment to funding the NIH.

We’re seeking consistent increases in the NIH budget over the long term, because the fruits of science are a necessity, not a luxury, as much in hard times as in good.

We’re calling our efforts United for Medical Research (UMR).

And we’re launching a multi-year advocacy and education campaign to seek the NIH funding necessary for delivering on the promise of the Life Sciences Century.

We hope this web site will serve the entire community of advocates for life sciences research.  Here we will collect and promote the latest news and events from across the NIH advocacy community.

We’ll also archive key resources that have served  to inform and educate policy makers, patients and caregivers, the scientific and academic communities across disciplines about the importance and need for a strong long-term commitment to the NIH.