President Joe Biden announced Feb. 2, 2022, that he is relaunching White House initiative ’Cancer Moonshot’. The ambitious program aims to work towards reducing the death rate from cancer in the nation by at least 50% over the next 25 years.
Biden was joined in the White House’s East Room by about 100+ members of the cancer community, including patients, survivors, researchers, advocates, caregivers, and members of Congress.
“My message today is this: We can do this. I promise you, we can do this,” Biden said on Wednesday. “All those we lost, all those we miss. We can end cancer as we know it.”
Both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke about losing loved ones to cancer.
In 2015, Beau Biden, the President’s eldest son and former Delaware attorney general, died at 46, battling brain cancer.
“It’s personal for me. But it’s also personal for nearly every American, and millions of people around the world,” Biden said in his remarks. “We all know someone who has had cancer, or is fighting to beat it.”
Vice President Kamala Harris spoke about losing her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, to colon cancer in 2009. “After a lifetime working to end cancer, cancer ended my mother’s life. I will never forget the day that she sat my sister and me down and told us she had been diagnosed with colon cancer. It was one of the worst days of my life… I miss my mother every day,” Harris continues on to say “I carry her memory with me wherever I go. When President Biden launched his Cancer Moonshot five years ago, I of course thought of my mother.”
The initiative aims to reduce the national death rate from cancer, while also improving the experience of survivors and family members who are living with the disease. In a fact sheet released by the White House the program would cut “today’s age-adjusted death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent” over the next 25 years.
The revamped initiative other goals include: diagnosing cancer sooner, preventing cancer, addressing inequities, targeting the right treatment for each patient, increasing progress against rare and childhood cancers, supporting patients, caregivers and survivors, and learning from the experience and data of previous patients. Testing and screenings for cancer will also be a priority, including increasing equitable access to screening and prevention with at-home screening, mobile screening, and community health networks. The White House also plans on “accelerating efforts to nearly eliminate cervical cancer through screening and HPV vaccination, with a particular focus on reaching people who are most at risk.”
“We can end cancer as we know it,” Biden promised during the event at the White House.
Biden named Dr. Danielle Carnival, who serves in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as the White House Cancer Moonshot coordinator. The President also announced the creation of the “Cancer Cabinet,” with representatives from the Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Defense, Energy and Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute and others across the federal government. The initiative will also involve the private sector, foundations, academic institutions.
Biden has called on Congress to fund his proposal to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a new program aimed at innovation in health research that will focus on diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.
The President exclaimed “I committed to this fight when I was vice president. It’s one of the reasons why, quite frankly, I ran for president. Let there be no doubt, now that I am president, this is a presidential, White House priority. Period.”
Biden initially was the head of the initiative when he was serving as Vice President under the Obama administration. Then the goal was to accelerate the nation’s rate of progress in the fight against cancer.
The President’s relaunch of the program does not include any new funding. In December 2016, Congress authorized $1.8 billion in funding for the government’s ‘moonshot’ initiative over seven years. There’s still $410 million left for the next two years.
The Biden administration is promising to mobilize the entire federal government in its efforts. Here’s what it plans to do:
- Create a White House Cancer Moonshot coordinator in the Executive Office of the President.
- Form and convene a cancer cabinet with members from various government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Office of Public Engagement.
- Issue a call to action on cancer screening and early detection, which includes developing a program to study and evaluate multicancer detection tests.
- Host a White House Cancer Moonshot summit involving research and healthcare communities, patient organizations, agency leadership, biopharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders.
- Expand an existing White House Cancer Roundtable Conversation Series with experts, patients, survivors and caregivers.
- Call on the private sector, health care providers, academic institutions, foundations and other Americans to see themselves as part of the mission to reduce deadly cancer and improve patient experiences.
At the center of Biden’s rejuvenated initiative is a goal to reduce the mortality rate by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years of a disease that is expected to kill 609,360 people in the United States in 2022 alone. That could mean millions more cancer survivors.
He continues on, saying “It’s bold,” Biden said. “It’s ambitious. But it’s completely doable. Just as we harnessed the size to develop cutting edge COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, we’ll bring a fierce sense of urgency to the fight against cancer.”
To read the whole transcript of the event click here.