WASHINGTON, D.C. — The White House is renewing its initiative to combat cancer.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced he is committing to reduce the cancer death rate by 50% in the next 25 years.
The issue is deeply personal for Biden: He lost his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015.
President Biden announced the first version of his cancer cure initiative in 2016 when he was vice president.
During that time, he worked on creating public-private partnerships with biomedical companies, community organizations and academic institutions.
During Barack Obama’s presidential term, Obama secured more than $1.8 billion for cancer research.
As part of the new effort, Biden will assemble a “cancer Cabinet” that includes 18 federal departments, agencies and offices, including leaders from the Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Defense, Energy and Agriculture.
The cabinet will chart the path for the Cancer Moonshot initiative, the president said.
Biden plans to bring in Danielle Carnival to oversee this second initiative.
Carnival is a neuroscientist who also worked on the 2016 version.
The White House also plans to host a summit on the initiative and continue a roundtable discussion series on it.
The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 1,918,030 new cancer cases and 609,360 cancer deaths this year.
The Biden administration aims to save more than 300,000 lives each year with the renewed initiative.
