Guiding the Cancer Moonshot Initiative

Deborah Mayer, a professor at the UNC School of Nursing, is a member of the blue-ribbon panel of experts helping to guide Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Mayer, an advanced practice oncology nurse with 40 years of cancer nursing practice, education, research, and management experience, spoke at the June 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago, which hosted the Moonshot Initiative. There, she expressed confidence of the potential of both the Cancer Moonshot and its blue ribbon panel.

“I’m sort of a skeptic at heart, but I can say that having participated in the blue ribbon panel, I’m very optimistic in the work that we are doing,” she said.

Vice President Biden spoke to ASCO attendees toward the end of the annual meeting.
“The whole world is looking to you,” he told the crowd of oncologists and medical professionals. “Your success can literally change the world. We need you now more than we ever have.”

This is story number 176 in the Carolina Stories 225th Anniversary Edition magazine.

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