First Lady Visits Storm-Ravaged Asheville Nearly One Month Later
Plus, Jill Biden announced $110 million in awards for Women’s Health Research Initiative to 23 recipients on Wednesday.
First Lady Dr. Jill Biden arrived in Asheville, North Carolina, Friday, to meet with volunteers and learn about relief efforts in the wake of Helene, which caused record flooding in the region.
This was Dr. Biden’s first trip to Western North Carolina since Helene hit. She visited two World Central Kitchen locations in Asheville where she received a briefing on WCK’s operations to prepare, load, and distribute meals to Asheville residents.
With the smell of pork loin and beans filling the air, volunteers at WCK's field kitchen at Bear's Smokehouse showed the first lady around the operation and described relief efforts since the storms. Biden was greeted by Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, chef and humanitarian Jose Andres, and others.
The tropical storm swept through Western North Carolina nearly one month ago and led to record flooding and landslides that destroyed homes and lives across the region. It made landfall in the Big Bend area of the Florida Gulf Coast as a Category 4 hurricane before traveling north and downgrading to a tropical storm.
As of Oct. 23, Helene killed nearly 100 people in North Carolina with more than 40 still unaccounted for, according to the state. Property damage from the storm is estimated in the billions, according to the National Weather Service.
During her visit, Biden donned gloves and stirred a large pot of beans. She also worked in a line of volunteers to wrap dishes of beans for distribution and asked some volunteers how their families and homes fared during Helene before leaving to visit another WCK location nearby at Ben’s Tune-Up. There, she joined a line packaging meals, alongside North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Manheimer and others. She also passed meals out to a line of people along Hilliard Avenue, and appeared in a few selfies.
More Images from First Lady Dr. Jill Biden’s Visit to Storm Recovery Sites in Asheville
The first lady then headed to Veterans Restoration Quarters and met with Team Rubicon workers amid dust and debris, speaking before a mural of the American flag.
“I really appreciate you coming here and helping other veterans,” she said.
After meeting with community members, Biden traveled east to Fayetteville and Cary, attending campaign events. With the Nov. 5 election less than two weeks away, North Carolina is among the battleground states where polls indicate the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump is still a toss-up.
During her campaign stop, Biden spoke about women’s rights, saying that she was devastated when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“The government should not be telling women what to do,” Biden said, adding that Trump’s abortion bans take away the ability for women to make their own healthcare decisions, but that Harris will sign a national law to restore reproductive freedoms.
“You shouldn’t have to worry that the care you need might be banned at your next duty station,” Biden said.
Jill Biden Announces $110 Million in Awards for Women’s Health Research
First Lady Dr. Jill Biden announced $110 million in awards from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to 23 recipients Wednesday during her keynote address at the HLTH 2024 conference in Las Vegas.
The researchers were chosen as part of Sprint for Women’s Health, a new program launched in February and administered by ARPA-H, an agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
“This is government at its best,” Biden said, adding that ARPA-H received an unprecedented 1,700 submissions for the funding sprint from 45 states and 34 countries.
The recipients were selected based on those applications with the best “sparks,” or most promising ideas so that researchers can take their work to the next level, and the best “launchpads,” or those with teams ready to bring new treatments and health products to market within the next two years, the first lady said.
“Any time I get together with my sisters and friends, we have conversations about our health. We ask each other: should I be taking hormone therapy for symptoms related to menopause? How is it possible that my heart attack was almost missed?” Biden said. “It’s time for investors, researchers, and business leaders to have those conversations too, not as an afterthought but as a first thought. Those kinds of questions belong in your research proposals, in your laboratories, in your pitch decks.”
The 23 awardees range from small start-ups to global innovators and were selected based on their high-impact and novel approaches to the Sprint’s six areas of women’s health its targeting, according to ARPA-H. The awardees selected are tackling cancer, ovarian health, gynecological and endometriosis care, obstetrics, menopause, lymphatics, pain management, and neurological and cardiovascular conditions. The solutions to these health challenges include biomarker research, diagnostics, therapeutics, devices, and digital health.
“Less than 10 months ago we first launched the Sprint for Women’s Health and asked for bold and transformative women's health solutions. Now with these awardees, we are sprinting towards changing the lives of millions of women who have been left behind in research for far too long,” said ARPA-H Director Renee Wegrzyn, Ph.D. in a press release. “We're pursuing not just great science, but a different way of doing business in the government. Integral to the Sprint is to catalyze and transform the market for women's health.”
Dr. Biden leads the White House Women’s Health Research Initiative that was launched jointly in an executive order by her husband, President Joe Biden, last November to fundamentally change how the country approaches and funds women’s health research.
The goal is to improve health outcomes for women who have historically been understudied and underrepresented in health research. Since its launch in November 2023, the Initiative has made significant investments to close gaps in research on women’s health—from menopause-related conditions to endometriosis to auto-immune conditions to cardiovascular disease—to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases and conditions that affect women uniquely, disproportionately, and differently.
In less than a year, the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research has galvanized nearly a billion dollars in funding for women’s health research, including the first lady’s recent announcement of $500 million from the U.S. Department of Defense and $200 million from the National Institutes of Health. Additionally, in his State of the Union address, President Biden called on Congress to make a bold, transformative investment of $12 billion in new funding for women’s health research. Several federal agencies have also committed to taking more than 100 actions to prioritize investments in women’s health research.
Among the award recipients are:
Aspira Women’s Health Inc. of Shelton, Connecticut, which will receive $10 million to create a first-of-its-kind definitive, non-invasive blood test to diagnose endometriosis.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Inc. of Boston, Massachusetts, which will receive $9.1 million to improve our ability to assess brain disorders (such as Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and multiple sclerosis) in women through a novel non-invasive MRI imaging biomarker.
Children’s Research Institute of Washington, D.C., which will receive $8.1 million to develop a novel way to assess chronic pain in women.
Gravidas Diagnostics, Inc. of Los Angeles, California, which will receive $3 million to create a first-of-its-kind at-home test to revolutionize our ability to detect early preeclampsia, a leading cause of maternal mortality and morbidity.
The University of Iowa, which will receive $10 million to revolutionize the treatment for late-stage and metastatic ovarian cancer by using personalized nanoparticles to boost a woman’s immune system.
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill), which will receive $3 million to improve our ability to treat migraines in women.
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