The Governance Crisis and Transformation of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT): An Administrative and Advocacy Coalition Analysis

Jennifer Lynn Johnson, The University of Texas School of Public Health

Abstract

Many scientists compete for limited cancer research and prevention funding. The Texas legislature and public created the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to make $3 billion of grant awards available for innovation in cancer research and development of the Texas cancer research industry. One important question would be if CPRIT was successful in achieving its goals, but a different, interesting question was what influenced CPRIT in its administration of awarding grants for cancer prevention and research? CPRIT governance has undergone substantial change and transformation from its creation to its reformed current state; however, a systematic administrative analysis of the crisis and transformation of CPRIT’s governance had not been undertaken. The model utilized was an adaptation of the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) (Sabatier & Jenkins-Smith, 1988), which accounted for both the external environment and the internal subsystem environment to influence policymaking and implementation holistically. This study tested ACF key conditional elements from collected data as evidence and used as a research method the process-tracing technique (Centre for Development Impact 2015) in each phase to explain CPRIT’s governance formation (Implementation Phase), failures (Crisis Phase), and transformation (Transformation Phase) over the time period of 2005-2015 (Beach & Pedersen, 2013). The results provided a parsimonious evidence-based simplified ACF conceptual model for CPRIT during its phases that integrated primarily durable conditions including fundamental Texas sociocultural values and social structure, basic constitutional structure, degree of consensus needed for a major cancer policy change, openness of the political system, and overlapping societal cleavages; limited conditions of Texas’ approach in other policy subsystems; and subsystem actors of Texas government authorities and CPRIT authorities. Overall, there were more conditional elements to CPRIT’s governance formation, failures, and reform that are unique to Texas than there were those that are more generalize-able to state governments everywhere. CPRIT’s ordeal appeared to be Texas-specific at the macro-level or environmental government failures. The CPRIT experiment provided a case study in what not to do at the micro-level administrative failures. During its Implementation Phase and Crisis Phase CPRIT’s Oversight Committee failed in its board governance responsibilities (Quantum Governance, 2016). Similarly, the CPRIT management failed in its administration responsibilities (Hood, 1986). Most of these shortcomings were addressed in its Transformation Phase and have been sustained for its remaining Future.

Subject Area

Public health|Public administration|Health care management

Recommended Citation

Johnson, Jennifer Lynn, "The Governance Crisis and Transformation of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT): An Administrative and Advocacy Coalition Analysis" (2017). Texas Medical Center Dissertations (via ProQuest). AAI10621071.
https://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/dissertations/AAI10621071

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