WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is zeroing in on the policy goals closest to his heart now that he’s no longer seeking a second term and will visit New Orleans on Tuesday to promote his administration’s “moonshot” initiative aiming at dramatically reducing cancer deaths.

The president and first lady Jill Biden will tour medical facilities and then deliver remarks at Tulane University on how the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health “is fast-tracking progress in how we prevent, treat, and detect cancer,” the White House says. That agency is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Before he leaves office in January, Biden hopes to move the U.S. closer to the goal he set in 2022 to cut U.S. cancer fatalities by 50% over the next 25 years, and to improve the lives of caregivers and those suffering from cancer.

Experts say the objective is attainable — with adequate investments.

“We’re curing people of diseases that we previously thought were absolutely intractable and not survivable,” said Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

Cancer is the second-highest killer of people in the U.S. after heart disease. This year alone, the American Cancer Society estimates that 2 million new cancer cases will be diagnosed and 611,720 people will die of cancer diseases.

Still, “if all innovation ended today and we could just get people access to the innovations that we know about right now, we think we could reduce cancer mortality by another 20 to 30%,” Knudsen said.

The issue is personal enough for Biden that, in his recent Oval Office address about bowing out of the 2024 campaign, the president promised to keep fighting for “my cancer moonshot so we can end cancer as we know it.”