Cancer Moonshot Plans and Priorities Becoming Clearer

In July, the Cancer Moonshot initiative organized national and local summits to discuss cancer research, treatment and prevention needs and the efforts being planned to address them.

Vice President Joe Biden, who heads the White House Moonshot program to accelerate the search for cures, assured summit participants that he’s good at “removing stuff,” meaning the bureaucratic red tape that can impede progress. The vice president also announced new public- and private-sector investments, policies, collaborations and other actions intended to help meet the Moonshot’s goal to make a decade of advances in cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care in five years.

The latest developments are encouraging, writes Taussig Cancer Institute Chairman Brian J. Bolwell, MD, FACP, of Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center, who met Biden for a post-summit tour of Cleveland Clinic’s Langston Hughes Community Health and Education Center, which facilitates cancer prevention and screening.

Obstacles to cancer research and clinical trials, access to basic care in underserved communities and the soaring cost of cancer treatment are among the “stuff’ that the Moonshot program will need to tackle, Dr. Bolwell notes in a commentary for Fox News.

Read his full column here.

Photo Credit: ©Russell Lee