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- Administration Relaunches Cancer Moonshot Initiative
The Biden Administration launched the next iteration of the Cancer Moonshot initiative on February 2 with an ambitious goal: slashing the cancer death rate in half within 25 years. The Administration relaunched the initiative after lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. The CAP supported the first Cancer Moonshot and has engaged with the Administration and Congress and its impact on pathologists.
In its release, the White House estimated that approximately missed 9.5 million because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The new Cancer Moonshot program has called for Americans to receive cancer screenings that were missed over the last two years. The program will also include efforts to expand HPV vaccinations, which help prevent cervical cancer, and the potential creation of diagnostics that can detect multiple cancers simultaneously, perhaps via an annual blood draw.
In the updated Cancer Moonshot, the Administration also set aside biomedical and health research budgets through entities like the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health. The initiative further called for expanding resources, including at-home screening, mobile units, clinical trials, and therapeutics to reach underserved communities.
A “Cancer Cabinet” will be convened by the White House, bringing together departments and agencies across government to address cancer on multiple fronts. These include the Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Defense, Energy, Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the National Cancer Institute, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, among others.