As someone with first-hand experience of a promising new medication for her illness, Springfield High School student Rachel Burns was happy to add her voice Friday to a bill in Congress to promote the need for more research into juvenile diseases.

Rachel, 15, who has cystic fibrosis, joined U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) at a news conference at Toledo Children’s Hospital, along with Rachel’s family, caregivers, and hospital officials, to highlight his bill to require the National Institutes of Health to spend a bigger part of its budget on the illnesses that strike young people.

“Children make up 20 percent of the U.S. population, yet not much more than 5 percent of research dollars coming out of NIH and other research dollars, government and other, go into pediatric research,” Mr. Brown said.