First lady touts screenings
On a visit to San Diego to highlight the administration’s “cancer moonshot” and initiatives for military families, first lady Jill Biden toured a Logan Heights health clinic Friday to discuss a $100,000 cancer screening grant, before greeting crew members of the USS Gabrielle Giffords warship based at Naval Base San Diego.
“Cancer touches all of us; the Bidens are no exception,” said Biden, who had surgery last month to remove a common type of skin cancer and lost a stepson, Beau Biden ,to cancer in 2015.
In a roundtable with providers at Logan Heights Family Health Center, she discussed federal efforts to improve cancer screenings and early detection programs for communities with limited health care access.
The administration’s moonshot initiative, which Joe Biden spearheaded while vice president, aims to improve cancer treatments and conditions for patients and to cut cancer death rates in half within a generation. Its goals include resuming screenings missed due to the pandemic, reducing smoking rates and getting more patients into clinical trials.
In September, the moonshot program awarded $100,000 to the health center to promote early detection, boost screenings and guide patients to high-quality cancer care and treatment. On Thursday, the administration announced an $11 million grant to fund similar programs at 22 other clinics throughout the nation.
“Early detection is the key,” Biden said. “A lot of cancers are curable.”
The first lady next stopped at the USS Gabrielle Giffords to greet about 20 crew members and deliver pizzas.
Her final stop was a dinner hosted by the Armed Services YMCA for other Gabrielle Giffords crew members and their families.
“Seeing it today, it’s hard to believe that it was eight years ago that we christened the ship,” she told the sailors, many of them joined by their spouses and children.
Biden acknowledged the role military families play in supporting service members, calling them as critical to the military mission “as the engine is to the ship.”