NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — In an effort to fight cancer, the White House is investing more time and money. A recent initiative highlights a 25 year plan to lower statistics.
President Biden just met with more officials to go over his continued efforts to fight cancer and push his Cancer Moonshot Initiative that he launched last year. The project is aiming to cut the cancer death rate in half over the next 25 years by improving testing, data pools, clinicals, trials and outreach programs.
The administration is currently focusing on helping people quit smoking, a big driver for cancer related deaths, and improving cancer research systems.
$240 million is also being invested from the Biden administration to help researchers with prevention, detection, treatment and survival projects.
Here in Tennessee, there's been an estimated 43,000 new cases this year and more than 14,000 people have lost their lives due to the disease. Lung cancer is the biggest driving force, followed by prostate and breast cancer.
"Of all the things cancer steals from us, time is the cruelest. The days spent in treatment or recovering from surgery. Anniversaries and holidays missed pages of photo albums unfilled," said First Lady Jill Biden. "We can't afford to wait another minute for better solutions, better treatments, better cures."
The fight against cancer is personal to the Bidens after losing their oldest son to it in 2015 and the First Lady being treated for skin cancer earlier this year.
