At Cancer Moonshot Summit, Vice President Biden Announces New Actions to Accelerate Progress Against Cancer
Today, the Cancer Moonshot hosted a summit at Howard University, in Washington, DC, as part of a national day of action that also included more than 270 events in communities across the United States. Vice President Joe Biden joined over 350 researchers, oncologists, care providers, data and technology experts, patients, families, and patient advocates at Howard. They were joined by more than 6,000 individuals at events in all 50 states, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam. This is the first time a group this expansive and diverse has met under a government charge with a goal of doubling the rate of progress in our understanding, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care of cancer.
In conjunction with the summit, the Vice President announced a set of new public and private sector actions to drive progress toward ending cancer as we know it. Federal agencies have come together as part of the Cancer Moonshot Task Force and announced today additional investments, improved policies, and new private sector partnerships focused on catalyzing new scientific breakthroughs, unleashing the power of data, accelerating the delivery of new therapies to patients, strengthening prevention and diagnosis, and improving patient access and care. Additionally, in response to the Vice President’s call to action, the private, philanthropic, and academic sectors, along with the patient advocacy community, have stepped up with new collaborations and actions aligned with the goals of the Cancer Moonshot. To see a full list of Moonshot-related announcements released today, please click here.
Cancer Moonshot Background
In his final State of the Union address, President Barack Obama put Vice President Biden in charge of a new national effort to end cancer as we know it. The goal of this Cancer Moonshot is to double the rate of progress toward a cure—to make a decade of advances in cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care in 5 years.
Since that announcement, the President has issued a Presidential Memorandum establishing a first-of-its-kind Cancer Moonshot Task Force, bringing together every federal agency that has a part to play in the fight against cancer. Agencies are convening under the leadership of the Vice President to ensure that we make the most of our federal investments, research and data, computing capabilities, targeted incentives, private-sector efforts, and patient-engagement initiatives.
In February, the White House announced a $195 million investment at the National Institutes of Health in Fiscal Year 2016 as part of a proposed nearly $1 billion budget initiative for the Cancer Moonshot.
Vice President Biden has traveled to a number of leading cancer centers in the United States and to venues around the world (including speaking at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting) to engage experts throughout the community—researchers, oncologists, patients and patient advocates, industry leadership, and data and technology experts, among others. Through these conversations, the Vice President identified the barriers and opportunities that he could most usefully take on as part of the Cancer Moonshot, and he issued a call to action for individuals and organizations to join the effort by launching new collaborations to address those challenges.
The content in this post has not been reviewed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Inc. (ASCO®) and does not necessarily reflect the ideas and opinions of ASCO®.
