President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden to visit New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) — President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will be traveling to New Orleans to attend a Biden Center Moonshot event on Tuesday, Aug. 13.
The president and first lady will tour medical facilities, then, at Tulane University, will help announce $150 million in awards from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. Those will support eight teams of researchers around the country working on ways to help surgeons more successfully remove tumors for people facing cancer.
The teams receiving awards include ones from Tulane, Dartmouth College, Johns Hopkins University, Rice University, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Washington and Cision Vision in Mountain View, California.
See the announcement livestreamed here around 3:30 p.m.
As stated on the White House website, there are multiple missions of Cancer Moonshot, such as “building a world where the word cancer loses its power, a diagnosis isn’t a death sentence cancer is prevented before it starts, catching cancer early so people can live longer and healthier and families don’t have to navigate their cancer journey alone.”
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In February 2022, the Bidens, along with Vice President Kamala Harris delivered remarks on the cancer-fighting efforts.
“My mother was a fighter and as I cared for her, during those many months, I watched her courageous fight. But after countless rounds of chemo, her body gave out,” said Harris, whose mother lost her battle with colon cancer in 2009.
Also at the event, the president showed his gratitude to the doctor who worked to save his son’s life. Beau Biden, a United States Army Officer, died from brain cancer at the age of 45.
“When we first started this work, the first thing we did was make sure that doctors and researchers worked together, shared information and allowed patients to share their data with other doctors and researchers to help others. But there is so much more to do,” said the president.
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The goals of the initiative are to prevent more than four million cancer deaths by 2047 and to improve the experience of people touched by cancer.
This will be done with the help of 95 new programs, policies and resources addressing five priority actions.
Biden also called on the public to take action toward ridding the world of cancer. The top priority is to get the screening done.
“The screening is how you catch it early before it’s too late. The earlier you get it the better shot you have,” said the president.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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