Health and the White House
By Lucas Cohen
The Obama Administration is no stranger to public health reform. Some of its most recent health-related projects — namely, President Barack Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) and Vice President Joe Biden’s foray into funding for cancer research — are quite ambitious. The executive branch promises to assign enormous sums of money towards improving medical care on multiple fronts. All in all, Obama and Biden need one billion dollars for the PMI over the next four years, and one billion dollars — 195 million in 2016 and 755 million in 2017 — to fund the cancer ‘moonshot.’
Initially announced during the 2015 State of the Union address, the PMI is Obama’s plan to effectively push precision medicine as the new medical standard in the United States.
Precision medicine, sometimes referred to as personalized medicine, isn’t a novel concept. Put simply, the current model for medical treatment and drug development in the United States — and globally, for that matter — hinges upon the creation of treatments and therapies that work for all patients, regardless of variation between individuals. Proponents of precision medicine believe that this model is inherently flawed; they believe that medicine should be tailored to the needs of the individual. By identifying discriminating factors like important genetic markers, lifestyle choices, or differences in microbiome compositions, and by developing specific therapies based on these factors, we can abandon the “one-size-fits-all” approach entirely.
As of now, the question isn’t whether or not this approach is viable, but how it can be delivered to patients. Of course, it isn’t as simple as flipping a switch; enormous amounts of data must be compiled and made readily available to both researchers and health care providers if the plan is to be successful.
In other words, the PMI is big. Really big. In late February, the White House, partnered with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), made several major steps towards completing a one-million-volunteer long-term cohort study, reportedly the largest ever of its kind, that promises to develop a more complete understanding of the relationship between genetics, lifestyle, and health. The NIH has begun working with Verily — formerly known as Google Life Sciences — to enroll the first 79,000 participants this year. The White House has also announced several other projects to promote personalized medicine through a number of universities and other institutions.
Biden’s war on cancer, another large health-related initiative from the executive branch, has made some progress, too; in addition to spreading the word about his crusade against cancer on the ground, Biden has taken steps to appoint new leadership in an effort to formalize the initiative. Biden’s cancer ‘moonshot’ is a coordinated effort to increase support for cancer research and promote the development of new and improved methods of treatment and care, including vaccines, detection methods, immunotherapy, and genomic tumor analysis.
In early February, Biden appointed Greg Simon, a former domestic policy adviser to Al Gore who has held multiple high-tier positions at pharmaceutical companies and charities, as executive director of the initiative. Prior to his appointment, Simon was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, a cancer that affects the blood and bone marrow, which he says has led him to understand the importance of the initiative.
Both Biden and Simon’s lives are inextricably linked to cancer. Both men are intimately familiar with the impact it can have on our lives. While Simon has had firsthand experience with the pain of chemotherapy, Biden is still mourning the loss of his son, Joseph “Beau” Biden, who died of brain cancer just last year. Overall, Biden’s cancer initiative is as enterprising as it is large — perhaps unsurprisingly, given his personal history with cancer.
In its final months, the Obama administration plans to continue working on these initiatives — but with the 2016 presidential election drawing ever closer, the future of these projects is arguably uncertain.
