U.S. House candidate Bohannan commits to spend more on cancer research

Ten years later, Newman is cancer free. But her battle led her to the American Cancer Society, where she now is the Iowa grassroots manager. 

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Newman and six others talked Friday with Christina Bohannan, an Iowa City Democrat running for Iowa’s 1st Congressional District. The ACS’s Cancer Action Network is asking Iowa candidates for Congress and governor to state their commitment to fighting cancer, a disease that an estimated 2 million Americans will be diagnosed with this year. 

Iowa has the fastest-rising cancer rate in the nation and the state is second, behind Kentucky, in the number of incidences of cancer. The Iowa Cancer Registry expects 21,700 new invasive cancers will be diagnosed this year and 6,400 more Iowans will die from the disease. 

“One of the things that is really alarming to me is not only the number of people I talk with who have cancer, but the number of young people,” Bohannan said. “The age that people are starting to get diagnosed is younger in a way we didn’t hear about in the past.” 

People under 50 are increasingly being diagnosed with some cancers, including colorectal, breast, prostate, uterine and pancreatic cancer, the American Cancer Society reported in 2025. The chances of young people dying from cancer have declined, but the anxiety and expense of fighting the disease take a toll on millions of American families. 

Bohannan, 55, felt some of that anxiety after a recent health screening, she told the group.  

“Recently, I had an abnormal mammogram and it was very, very scary to me,” she said.  

Cancer funding

Bogdan Buzdugan, 23, a cancer researcher at the University of Iowa, said he chose his career path after a friend was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type of cancerous brain tumor. He wanted to know if Bohannan would support annual increases for cancer research funding to the National Institutes of Health. 

“That is absolutely something we need to support and increase,” Bohannan said. 

Bohannan criticized her opponent, incumbent Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, a Republican from Ottumwa, for voting last year for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which slashed spending on healthcare and is predicted to result in 15 million more people not having health insurance coverage by 2034, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. 

The biggest change under the bill is a requirement that most Medicaid recipients spend at least 80 hours a month working, volunteering or going to school in order to keep their coverage.

Miller-Meeks, an ophthalmologist, recently supported reauthorizing early breast cancer screening. ACS-CAN said it is “in discussions” with Miller-Meeks’ campaign about scheduling her for a similar forum.

Bohannan, whose father died from emphysema after many years of smoking, said she would support continued funding for smoking-cessation programs and oppose efforts to reduce government regulation of tobacco. 

Lung cancer remains one of the leading causes of cancer deaths in Iowa. 

“Many people start (using tobacco products) young before they really know the risks and then they get addicted,” Bohannan said. “That’s something I really want to work on.”

Loss of rural health care options

In her travels across Iowa’s 1st District, which covers the southeastern quadrant of the state, Bohannan said she’s heard about Iowans having to drive an hour or more for doctor appointments because some rural hospitals have closed. 

MercyOne closed its health care center in Ottumwa in January and the Southeast Iowa Regional Medical Center in Fort Madison ended birthing and delivery services last December. 

Rural residents also are underrepresented in cancer research trials, Bohannan said. 

“I want to make sure our rural residents are included in some of those studies because there are some issues that affect rural areas sometimes more than other areas,” she said. 

Agricultural risks

Because cancer risk is a mix of genetics, lifestyle and environmental factors, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why rates are rising in Iowa. But agricultural chemicals have been under increased scrutiny, especially as cities struggle to remove nitrate from public drinking water.

Bohannan said she would like to make more federal money available to incentivize farmers to implement conservation practices, like growing cover crops, that reduce fertilizer runoff. She does not want to tie federal crop insurance to farming practices. 

“We need to keep crop insurance for what it was intended for, which is to make sure that there’s a little bit of a fallback there if things go wrong,” she said. 

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