Biden administration launches effort to address cancer disparities stemming from poverty

The Biden administration announced Monday it’s launching a new initiative to improve cancer outcomes in low-income communities.  

The administration is funneling $50 million to the new effort, dubbed the Persistent Poverty Initiative, which will be evenly distributed to five cancer research centers with the goal of addressing the “structural and institutional factors of persistent poverty” when it comes to cancer, according to a release from the National Institutes of Health.

The funds will help each center work with communities in “persistent poverty areas” to combat the structural drivers of cancer disparities related to poverty, including lack of access to health care and healthy food, and tobacco use.

A persistent-poverty area is defined as a place where 20 percent or more of the population has lived below the federal poverty line for the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  

“Persistent poverty is a place-based and community phenomenon that reflects a failure of the structures and institutions in society, including health care,” said Shobha Srinivasan, senior adviser for health disparities and health equity in NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences.  

“Conducting research to understand the connections between institutions — such as social, economic, and health systems — and persistent poverty is the only way to inform changes to social conditions and determinants of health that will ultimately improve overall health, cancer control, and cancer outcomes,” Srinivasan added.   

The centers will also conduct research in those same areas to measure the effectiveness of the structural interventions on cancer control and prevention, according to a release.  

Some of the research will focus on how reducing obesity, improving nutrition, increasing physical activity, quitting smoking and improving living conditions through supplemental income influence cancer rates and outcomes.  

The grants will be spread out over the next five years “pending the availability of funds” to centers in Texas, Alabama, California, New York, and Utah.