The Cancer Moonshot is a Mission, and All of Us #CanServe

When I announced my decision not to seek the nomination for President, I said that if I could do anything, I would have wanted to have been the President that ended cancer.

The initiative we’ve come to know as the Cancer Moonshot grew out of that statement.

Since then, I’ve traveled the country and the world, touching many of the major nerve centers in the fight against cancer to hear ideas about how we can double the rate of progress we’re making in this fight.

I spoke with oncologists, surgeons, researchers, data scientists, patients, and advocates. And I heard from tens of thousands of Americans around the country, who wrote and called to share how this horrible disease has touched their lives. What it’s taken from them. Who it’s taken from them.

Today, for the first time, physicians, scientists, nurses, patient advocates, families, and cancer survivors are coming together with foundations, companies, and institutions all at once, all around the country, all under the same national charge: Making a decade’s worth of progress in five years in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.

Today we are announcing a series of measures being implemented by government agencies, private companies, universities, institutions and foundations — that address some of these problems.

The Departments of Energy and Veterans Affairs are collaborating to apply the most powerful computational assets at the National Labs to nearly half a million veterans’ records from one the world largest research cohorts: the Million Veteran Program, a cornerstone of the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative.

NIH is launching a new partnership, bringing together 12 biopharmaceutical companies, research foundations, and philanthropies to invest together to fund research and make all resulting data available, ultimately bringing more new therapies to patients in less time.

The Breast Cancer Research Foundation — Inspired by the Moonshot’s call for collaboration and commitment, is doubling its annual research investment from $50 million to $100 million — aiming for a cumulative investment of $1 billion by 2021 to speed up “connecting the dots” between the molecular information we can amass, and our understanding of cancer; and to accelerate turning new discoveries into effective treatments.

That’s just to name a few.

And you don’t have to be a CEO or a wealthy philanthropist to play a role. One of the foundations making a commitment today literally began as a lemonade stand. So if you’re stepping up in your community — volunteering, collaborating across disciplines, or launching a new initiative — I want to hear about it.

Reply here and tell me how you’re stepping up. Because every single one of us #CanServe a role in beating this disease.