Jill Biden meets cancer survivors, military families during Texas trip

First lady Jill Biden was in San Antonio, Texas on Wednesday to meet with cancer survivors and military families who have children with disabilities.

During a visit to the Mays Cancer Center, Biden spoke to patients and doctors about the disparities of cancer care among the Latinos, where she highlighted the importance of combating language and cultural barriers to make better care possible among the community.

"You hear that word cancer and you just shut down," Biden said at the center, home to the UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center. "You need the patient advocates. We need education."

She also spoke of Beau Biden, the late son of President Biden, who died from brain cancer in 2015. She said her family was "fortunate enough" to have access to the best medical care in the world.

"We're trying to end cancer as we know it and I think we can do it," she said.

The visit was part of an effort to reignite the Cancer Moonshot initiative, which was launched in 2016 while President Biden was vice president with the goal to discover a vaccine immunotherapy to fight cancer.

The Biden administration has set a goal to reduce cancer deaths by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years and improve the experiences people have living with and surviving the illness.

The Biden administration, along with the first lady, have advocated for jumpstarting cancer screenings that were missed or delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and ensure that tools to detect and treat cancer are readily available to all communities.

At Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Jill Biden toured a child development center and spoke with military families about the importance of supporting military children with disabilities.

Biden said increasing access to childcare services for military families would strengthen the military as a whole.

"If we could make sure that things like critical education support services are available to all children, military families would be able to do even more with your talent, your dedication, your leadership, and your skills," she said at a press conference during her visit to the base.

That visit came as part of the Joining Forces Initiative, which aims to provide support services to military members, veterans and their families and includes employment services, military child education and health.

The initiative aims to support the children of military members in classrooms and help ease burdens that may be more cumbersome due to the military's highly mobile lifestyle.

"We're bringing together every part of our government and partners across sectors to make sure you have what you need to thrive. Again and again in my travel to bases, I've heard that for families who have children with disabilities it's so difficult to get the support services that kids need when families move from duty station to duty station."