Biden to re-launch effort aimed at cutting cancer deaths by half | Joe Biden News
So-called cancer ‘moonshot’ poured $1.8bn in federal funds into combatting cancer when first launched in 2016.
United States President Joe Biden has announced a relaunch of a government “moonshot” effort to cut cancer deaths in half within 25 years.
The effort was first launched in 2016 and poured $1.8bn of federal funds into combatting cancer across seven years. Biden, whose son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46, spearheaded the original initiative as vice president.
Just $400m remain of the original funding, according to US officials, although Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are not set to announce new funding.
Instead, the White House on Wednesday said the administration would be “reigniting” the initiative with “renewed White House leadership”.
Biden was scheduled to give remarks Wednesday from the East Room of the White House, along with his wife, Jill, Harris, members of Congress and about 100 members of the cancer community including patients, survivors, caregivers, families, advocacy groups and research organisations.
The re-upped initiative would rely on “progress in cancer therapeutics, diagnostics, and patient-driven care, as well as the scientific advances and public health lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic”, according to the White House.
“It’s now possible to set ambitious goals: to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years,” the White House said, saying Biden would announce a “call to action” on cancer screening to kick off the plan.
The American Cancer Society has estimated that there will be 1,918,030 new cancer cases and 609,360 cancer deaths in 2022. What Biden has aimed to do is essentially save more than 300,000 lives annually from the disease, something the administration believes is possible because the age-adjusted death rate has already fallen by roughly 25 percent during the past two decades.
The coronavirus pandemic has consumed healthcare resources and caused people to miss more than 9.5 million cancer screenings, according to officials.
The initiative lean on developments that allows medical professionals to diagnose cancer sooner and progress in technologies that could help to prevent cancer. It will also seek to address underlying inequalities in access to cancer screenings and treatment.
The White House effort will include creating a “cancer cabinet” – including 18 federal departments, agencies and offices, including leaders from the Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Defense, Energy and Agriculture – that will coordinate on the issue, according to the White House.
The White House will also will host a summit on the cancer initiative and continue a roundtable discussion series on the subject.
