This is our moment to end cancer as we know it

Cancer is personal to all of us. Every year, more than 1.6 million people are diagnosed with some form of it in the United States. Our friends, our families, our neighbors all have felt the heavy burden of a cancer diagnosis or the loss of a loved one — myself included.

That’s one reason that I was truly humbled and honored to be back at the White House recently as President Biden fulfilled a campaign promise to relaunch the “Cancer Moonshot,” a whole-of-government approach to end cancer as we know it.

Amid World Cancer Day and the 50th anniversary of the passage of the National Cancer Act, President Biden and first lady Jill Biden relaunched the Cancer Moonshot with new ambitious — but achievable — goals: to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years, and to improve the experience of patients and families living with and surviving cancer. This is deeply personal to the Bidens — as it is to my family and me — and it should be for all Americans who have been impacted by this terrible disease.

I first got to know Joe Biden when my mom, Martha, was battling cancer. Biden was vice president then and he had just lost his son, Beau, to cancer. My wife and I had the chance to visit with the Bidens, and we shared our family’s story with them. We thanked them for the incredible way they inspired us to never lose hope and carry on. When I shared in passing what my mom was going through, Biden called her to see how she was doing. When she ran out of chemo and radiation treatment options, he offered to connect us with other doctors and experts to see if they could help.

Shortly thereafter, on the heels of losing his son, Biden issued a “battle cry” and a call for “a moonshot to cure cancer.” In one of his final acts as vice president, he reached across the aisle to enlist the help of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to pass the 21st Century Cures Act, which McConnell proposed to rename the Beau Biden Act.

Following the loss of my mom to cancer — and inspired by Biden’s example of turning pain into purpose — I enlisted myself in the effort to end cancer as we know it. In 2018, I formally joined as an adviser to the Biden Cancer Initiative to help develop and drive implementation for accelerating progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research and care, and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes.

This isn’t the beginning of our battle against cancer. The “cancer moonshot” is finally within our grasp, in large part because of the bipartisan congressional support and government investments made over the past quarter-century.

The newly relaunched Cancer Moonshot program is possible because of all that we have learned over several decades about therapeutics, diagnostics and patient-driven care — and all the more so because of the scientific advances in our response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Five years ago, the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act invested $1.8 billion for research to  address cancer disparities, drug discovery and approval, and innovation regarding childhood cancer. During his administration, President Biden has continued to advocate for increased research funding, including the establishment of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a DARPA-like biomedical research agency to accelerate the pace of discovery in biomedical and health research.

As part of the newly relaunched Cancer Moonshot, the president has formed a Cancer Cabinet to drive progress across multiple agencies. Moreover, Biden has issued a call to action on cancer screening and early detection, providing information and access to get back on track after more than 9.5 million screenings were missed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lastly, the president has taken an all-hands-on-deck, broad-based approach to enlisting the support of the private sector, foundations, academic institutions, health care providers, cancer survivors, caregivers and advocates alike in the fight to end cancer.

Cancer isn’t — and shouldn’t be — a partisan issue. Cancer impacts all of us; it doesn’t discriminate whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, rich or poor, young or old. Leaders on both sides of the aisle in Washington, and throughout the country, should come together to support the relaunched Cancer Moonshot and our common goal: to end cancer as we know it.

L. Felice Gorordo is CEO of eMerge Americas, Miami Cancer Institute Council director, and previously served as adviser to the Biden Cancer Initiative. Follow him on Twitter @fgorordo.