Federal Cancer Initiative Focused on Environmental Factors

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) — A national initiative dedicated to reducing cancer deaths is focusing on how environmental exposure contributes to a diagnosis.

On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control hosted a virtual panel of experts for Cancer Moonshot.

It’s a coalition that was relaunched in February by the Biden administration to pull together resources at the federal level for cancer research.

The operation aims to reduce the cancer death rate by at least 50% over the next 25 years.

The goal of the public forum is to continue the discussion about innovations in cancer research, prevention, and treatment, as well as to ensure that the initiative reaches all Americans.

The initiative’s experts say they want to create innovative tools to help prevent cancer and make sure those tools reach all Americans, especially as the rate of childhood cancer continues to rise.

“So the bottom line is that we know enough to know that environmental pollutants are significant contributors to incidents of human cancers,” said Dr Margaret Kripke. “But we need to have better methods to identify them.”

Kripke said that over the next few months, a team will update the cancer group’s national guidelines. While there’s a lot of work to be done to understand the environmental factors linked to cancer, Kripke said the research already done has created new avenues and ideas for preventing cancer rather than just curing it.