President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden reignited the Cancer Moonshot, a White House-led national effort to end cancer as we know it, with two ambitious but achievable goals: to cut the cancer death rate in half over 25 years, preventing more than four million cancer deaths by 2047, and to improve the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer. To advance this mission, President Biden created the first-ever Cancer Cabinet, bringing together more than 15 agencies and departments to accelerate progress for people facing cancer.

Today, as part of President Biden’s Unity Agenda and following his State of the Union address, the Biden Cancer Moonshot announced key new actions that deliver urgent progress to Americans, including:

These announcements build on significant steps over the past year that the Cancer Cabinet has taken to end cancer as we know it:

Delivering progress from America’s cancer research system

  • The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released the Research Data Framework (RDaF) 2.0 which provides a roadmap for making health data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable to improve cancer research innovation and patient care.
  • The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and other federal partners launched USCDI+ Cancer to further cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, research, and care through the power of standardized data
  • The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) enhanced preventive services and cancer care for Veterans by expanding access to genetic testing and lung and colorectal cancer screening. In the coming months, VA will also increase access to health care and benefits for urethral cancers by making them presumptive for service connection for eligible Gulf War and post-9/11 Veterans. In addition, VA has expanded its National TeleOncology service, is creating a radiation oncology data registry, and is leveraging trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (AI)-aided tools to enhance cancer detection in screening procedures.
  • The NCI and VA Interagency Group to Accelerate Trials Enrollment (NAVIGATE), was created in 2018, to facilitate Veteran participation in NCI supported clinical trials, and the Department of Defense (DoD) Uniformed Services University will participate in NCI’s Cancer Research Screening Network, launched in February 2024. The first effort through this network will be Vanguard, a landmark study on multi-cancer detection tests, which NCI plans to launch in 2024.

Delivering patient navigation support to every American facing cancer

  • The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) established Principal Illness Navigation (PIN) services to help Medicare beneficiaries with high-risk conditions like cancer identify and connect with clinical and support resources proven to improve health outcomes and the patient experience by reducing times between diagnosis and treatment, and increasing treatment completion. These services also lower healthcare costs by reducing ER visits and hospitalizations and reduce health disparities, including by facilitating access to services to address unmet social determinants of health, such as food and housing insecurity and transportation needs.
  • The CMS Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM) selected oncology practices to participate in a five-year voluntary model that aims to improve quality and reduce costs through payment incentives and required participant redesign activities.
  • The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advanced Project Facilitate, a single point of contact call center to help oncology health care providers submit expanded access requests, which is a potential pathway for patients to receive investigational drugs outside of a clinical trial.
  • The Indian Health Service (IHS) created a culturally-appropriate cancer navigation curriculum for American Indians and Alaska Natives, aimed to assist patients, caregivers, and the community to overcome barriers to cancer prevention and care coordination throughout the cancer care continuum.

Tackling the biggest single driver of cancer deaths in this country—smoking

  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Tips From Former Smokers® campaign, initially launched in 2012, has created seven new, impactful ads to encourage people to quit smoking.
  • A Cancer Cabinet collaborative including NCI, CDC, DoD, CMS, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working to disseminate, promote, and expand the availability of smoking cessation resources for patients and providers in cancer treatment settings, to help ensure that cancer centers have the tools to routinely address tobacco cessation with people during and after cancer treatment. One source of materials is the Cancer Moonshot funded Cancer Center Cessation Initiative (C3I).
  • IHS in collaboration with the NCI Smokefree.gov Initiative launched SmokefreeNATIVE, a new, free text messaging program to help American Indians and Alaska Natives quit smoking commercial tobacco.

These important accomplishments deliver significant progress toward addressing President Biden’s goal to end cancer as we know it—and there is more work to do. Through the Cancer Cabinet, the Biden Cancer Moonshot will continue efforts to improve America’s cancer research system, tackle key drivers of cancer deaths including smoking, and expand access to patient navigation. We urge all sectors to make bold progress and deliver meaningful actions along with us. Together, we will end cancer as we know it.

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