Jill Biden is giving a star-powered boost to the launch of a new effort tied to President Biden’s “cancer moonshot” initiative, teaming up with singer Mary J. Blige for a roundtable event.
The “Family Affair” songstress will join Biden on Monday to kick off the American Cancer Society’s National Roundtables on Breast and Cervical Cancer, the White House announced Friday.
The series of roundtables is aimed at bringing together “leading organizations and experts to drive progress and improve the lives of people living with cancer, as well as support their families,” according to the White House.
The Bidens — who first began the cancer moonshot initiative in 2016 — relaunched it in February with the goal of cutting the cancer death rate in half over the next 25 years. The then-vice president’s son, Beau Biden, died in 2015 from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
Blige, 51, has been an advocate for preventative cancer screenings. The Grammy Award winner said last year that several of her close family members had died from breast, cervical and lung cancer.
“I didn’t know about breast cancer or mammograms until I was 40 and I was in the music business and I was trying to take care of myself,” Blige said in 2021, according to Essence magazine. “My body started talking so I started listening.”
