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Bidens to tout Cancer Moonshot initiative in New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana —President Biden and first lady Jill Biden are traveling to New Orleans Tuesday to tout the Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative, a week after the Department of Health and Human Services awarded nearly $9 million to improve access to cancer screenings and follow-up treatments in underserved communities – part of the initiative’s effort to expand preventive cancer care.
Two years ago, the Biden administration relaunched the Cancer Moonshot initiative with two main goals — to prevent 4 million cancer deaths by 2047 and to improve the experience of people affected by cancer.
Since then, the initiative has announced collaborations with the private sector, among them an effort involving the country’s largest health insurers, who have committed to expand access to services to help patients and their families in the U.S. navigate cancer treatments or screenings and $100 million for cancer prevention and treatment in Africa.
But the upcoming election may affect future cancer research funding for the Cancer Moonshot. The program began under the Obama administration in 2016, and it continued to receive funding during the Trump administration, too. Mr. Biden also initiated a private-sector phase that he paused in 2019 when he launched his bid for the presidency. Funding for the Cancer Moonshot initiative decreased during the pandemic in 2020.
“With every election, there’s a concern that funding will be cut. And over the past few years with the budget standoffs, that has significantly infected funding for cancer research,” said Dr. Stefan Grant, director of the Tulane Cancer Center.
Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the United States, with approximately 600,000 deaths annually, according to the Health and Human Services Department. A new cancer study found that male cancer cases are expected to rise by 53% globally from 2022 to 2050. The president often speaks about how his own life has been affected by cancer after his son Beau Biden died from brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.
One focus of the initiative is increasing engagement in cancer prevention by urging Americans to get cancer screenings that they missed during the pandemic. One study funded by the Cancer Moonshot is researching cancer detection blood tests as a less invasive tool for early detection of cancer. It also works to increase community engagement in order to address disparities in cancer treatment.
“If you have great treatment, it doesn’t mean anything if you can’t get it to the patients,” says Dr. Joe Ramos, Director and CEO at the Louisiana Cancer Research Center, who will join the president at the New Orleans event. He says the Cancer Moonshot initiative works to re-frame the conversation around cancer to be more patient-centered.
Grant says the Louisiana area that he serves sees a number of cancers caused by factors that are preventable – smoking, obesity, and inactivity. His team is working on community outreach to modify those risks and advocate for more cancer screenings. Cancers identified early are often more treatable.
“Within Louisiana, it’s historically been difficult to access care,” says Grant. “We are trying to make entry into and flow through the healthcare system as painless as possible. The healthcare system is a terrifying place for people who haven’t lived in it.”
But funding specifically allocated for the Cancer Moonshot was not renewed in the March congressional spending bill, leading to concerns about funding in the future.
Ramos says this is a bipartisan issue that needs congressional funding.
When asked if the Trump campaign would advocate continued funding for the Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary responded, “serious question: what policies has he implemented? And what have they done?”
“America leads the world in cancer research, and it does that because the government has been such a great funder of research,” Grant said. “We really don’t want to lose that edge.”
Jake Rosen and Aaron Navarro contributed to this report.
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contributed to this report.
Lewes, England — In an urban nature reserve in a small town about two hours south of London, you’ll find the Lewes Railway Land urban nature reserve teaming with life — including a lot of humans and their companions.
“We get lots of people come onto the reserve — which we want — lots of dog walkers,” Dylan Walker, with the Railway Land Wildlife Trust that manages the green oasis, told CBS News. “Inevitably, that has an impact on the habitat.”
After years of heavy use, the reserve has suffered a little for its popularity, losing some native plant species. But Walker is hoping to bring that biodiversity back.
“We were kind of going, what could we do here?” Walker said. They found the answer in a backpack, designed specifically for dogs.
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“We’ve got our seed and sand mix here, of our native wildflowers and grasses, and we’re going to put them inside the pack,” Walker explained, noting the importance of ensuring that any seeds spread deliberately in a natural area must be native to the region.
Small holes allow the seeds inside to drop out as dogs move around.
Ruthie Martin tested it out on her daughter’s golden doodle when she came to the reserve for a walk.
“They don’t mind the packs on their backs,” Martin said of the canine seed sowers.
More than 300 years ago, wolves roamed the U.K., often covering up to 100 miles in a single night. Walker said they’d pick up seeds in their fur and drop them in new places.
“It’s really great to have this kind of project where we could use our beloved pets to imitate the behavior of these wild animals,” said Martin.
It’s an idea that initially came from two sisters in Chile, whose backpack-wearing dogs have been helping to regrow forests destroyed by wildfires.
Organizers in the U.K. say it could take a couple years to see the full impact of the pilot project on the reserve.
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Will 988 call the police? Data suggests 1% of mental health crisis calls get “involuntary” rescues
Many people in mental health crisis fear that if they dial 988, law enforcement might show up or they might be forced to go to the hospital.
But getting sent that kind of “involuntary emergency rescue” happens to around 1% of callers, suggests new data from Vibrant Emotional Health, the administrator of the 988 Lifeline for suicide and mental health crises.
“Involuntary intervention is the last resort. We want to make sure we’re collaborating and engaging with people in crisis and empowering them, so we don’t need to go in that direction,” said Christopher Drapeau, Vibrant’s director of research and evaluation.
A Pew Charitable Trusts survey last year cited by Vibrant’s white paper found that around 1 in 5 adults worry that law enforcement would be sent after them for using 988 or that they might be forced to go to the hospital.
According to 988’s policies, counselors are urged to use “the least invasive intervention” possible to respond to suicide attempts. But if other attempts to deescalate fail, then counselors can summon other emergency response services like an involuntary rescue.
Counselors for 988 do not have the ability to track the exact location of callers. But the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or SAMHSA, which oversees Vibrant and the hotline, says in “rare situations” that counselors are able to ask a 911 dispatcher to use “geolocation services” to try and find where a call is coming from.
It is not clear from the data what percentage of the “involuntary” rescues relied on police responding to calls, as opposed to paramedics or another kind of emergency response.
“We haven’t been this transparent in the past. So we want to acknowledge that, and show people that this is what we have,” Drapeau told CBS News of the white paper he authored.
Drapeau said the white paper is his team’s first evaluating the performance of 988 and is the most comprehensive look at the topic to date. The idea for the report came from talks with SAMHSA officials.
Law enforcement have often been the go-to for 911 dispatchers responding to suicide attempts. Advocacy groups have called for more jurisdictions to fund “mobile crisis teams” that can respond to suicide attempts with medics and behavioral health professionals, instead of police.
“If somebody attempted suicide during the call and had a medical injury as a result, you need to respond to that. So I don’t know if we could completely abolish all involuntary interventions,” Drapeau said.
“These numbers may not be perfect”
Vibrant’s white paper focuses on two snapshots of data that come largely from when the line was a 1-800 number, before the nationwide launch of the easier-to-remember 988 shortcut to reach a counselor during a mental health crisis.
The largest snapshot in the paper still only spans around 2 million calls made from 2019 through 2023, tallied from a fraction of the now more than 200 locally run crisis centers that underpin the network.
For context, more than 400,000 calls were routed by the 988 network in July alone.
“We acknowledge the limitations of these data. These numbers may not be perfect. They may differ if we had every single center reporting data, if we had a more precise definition, maybe it changes. But it appears today that the vast majority of 988 calls do not involve emergency services intervention,” said Drapeau.
Of those nearly 2 million calls, the white paper tallies around 2% resulting in emergency services – both “voluntary” and “involuntary” – being sent in response to calls.
Callers categorized by counselors as being at “imminent risk” of suicide, a much narrower group, had emergency services sent to them at a higher rate.
Among those, a quarter got “voluntary dispatches” — with the consent of the callers — while another quarter got “involuntary” rescues.
Better data is in the works. While current figures rely on a mix of requirements and voluntary reporting, a Vibrant spokesperson said it is working with SAMHSA to develop a national standard for what metrics all centers will be required to report in the future.
A plan drawn up by SAMHSA in April calls for states to submit data to the agency on the number of contacts that result in law enforcement being sent.
Another evaluation planned by Vibrant will try to refine the definition of when to deem a caller at “imminent risk” and how to handle those cases. Completing that evaluation will likely take a couple of years, Drapeau said, and will help them figure out how to move from involuntary to more collaborative interventions.
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Over 30 killed in Mexico cartel stronghold as violence rages after Sinaloa leaders detained in U.S.
Eleven more people have been killed in a wave of violence in a Mexican cartel heartland shaken by gang infighting, authorities said Sunday.
The latest fatalities included five men whose bodies were found on a highway south of the city of Culiacan, the Sinaloa state prosecutor’s office said in a daily update.
More than 30 people have been reported dead in a week of bloodshed in Sinaloa, although authorities did not specify how many were believed to be linked to the cartel infighting.
The clashes follow the dramatic arrest on U.S. soil on July 25 of Sinaloa Cartel co-founder Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, who claimed he had been kidnapped in Mexico and delivered into US custody against his will. Zambada pleaded not guilty last week in New York in a drug trafficking case that accuses him of engaging in murder plots and ordering torture.
Zambada, 76, was detained along with Joaquin Guzman Lopez, a son of El Chapo, who is serving a life sentence in the United States.
The violence is believed to pit gang members loyal to El Chapo and his sons against others aligned with Zambada, who pleaded not guilty to a raft of charges in a New York court Friday.
Schools were closed Thursday and Friday due to the violence and the governor said Sunday’s Independence Day festivities had been canceled.
The United States on Thursday issued a security alert because of “reports of car thefts, gunfire, security forces operations, roadblocks, burning vehicles and closed roadways” in the vicinity of Culiacan.
IVAN MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images
In an unexpected twist, last month Mexican prosecutors said they were bringing charges against Guzmán for apparently kidnapping Zambada — but it also cited another charge under an article of Mexico’s criminal code that defines what he did as treason.
Nowhere in the statement does it mention that the younger Guzmán was a member of the Chapitos — “little Chapos” — faction of the Sinaloa cartel, made up of Chapo’s sons, that smuggles millions of doses of the deadly opioid fentanyl into the United States, causing about 70,000 overdose deaths each year. According to a 2023 indictment by the U.S. Justice Department, the Chapitos and their cartel associates used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers.”
El Chapo, the Sinaloa cartel’s founder, is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado after being convicted in 2019 on charges including drug trafficking, money laundering and weapons-related offenses.
Last year, El Chapo sent an “SOS” message to Mexico’s president, alleging that he has been subjected to “psychological torment” in prison.
