April 28, 2025

Advocacy Action Alert: Support Funding for the CDEA

Advocacy is an important part of the RLS Foundation's work to increase awareness and promote RLS research. We ask RLS community members to participate in Advocacy Action Alerts to expand our reach within Congress. If you have any questions, please email adrianna@rls.org.

Background: The United States Congress is currently working on the annual spending bills for FY 2026. Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) is leading a sign-on letter, asking for funding for the Chronic Disease Education and Awareness (CDEA) Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Why It’s Important: The CDEA aims to improve public health outcomes and address health disparities related to chronic diseases through increased awareness, education and outreach. This support allows for public health activities dedicated to sleep or sleep disorders to continue. Though there is strong scientific evidence of sleep’s critical role in overall health, the CDC only has a few narrow sleep programs. It is important for the CDC to strengthen this foundation and modernize sleep public health, education and awareness activities.

Request: Please provide at least $6 million for the Chronic Diseases Education and Awareness Program at the CDC. Your representative must sign-on by Thursday, May 15th.

Action: Email your House representatives asking them to sign-on to this letter!

1. Find your representative's contact information here

2. Download and save the sign-on letter and it's corresponding Dear Colleagues letter

3. Email the staffer, using the sample message below. Please copy and paste the message below into an email, as the representatives will need the link to sign-on. Attach both sign-on letters that you downloaded to the email.

**Sample Message**

Dear [Staffer Name],

My name is [Your Name] and I am a constituent and an advocate for the Restless Legs Syndrome community. I write today to ask that your office please join FY26 Appropriations Sign-On Letter for the Chronic Disease Education and Awareness (CDEA) Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, led by Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA). I have attached a copy of the letter and its corresponding Dear Colleague to this message and ask that you sign on to this critical letter. To sign on, please use this link.

[Briefly share your personal RLS story in 2-3 sentences.]

Thank you for your time and your consideration of this request. I look forward to hearing from you in this regard.

Sincerely,

[Name]

[Address]

****

*Please Note: Only Congressional representatives can access the link in the sample message. If you copy and paste the message into an email, the link should be included. The link is also embedded in the sign-on letters.

It is important to reach out as soon as possible, to ensure that your congressional offices have time to review and approve the letter. Last year, because of our advocacy efforts the sign-on letter attracted bipartisan supporters and we are hoping to attract even more support this year to demonstrate our growing influence on Capitol Hill and impact on medical research and public health.

Thank you for your support as an advocate! If you have questions, please email adrianna@rls.org.