First Lady stops to highlight health care access

First Lady Dr. Jill Biden visited a local Washington DC center to highlight the need for health care access.The visit to Whitman-Walker Health on Friday was to promote support services for cancer patients and caregivers, as well as hear about the impact of COVID-19 on access to health care, including cancer screenings and prevention efforts.

"We just have to work together and address some of these things that we're seeing," said Dr. Biden."You know the first thing we have to do is address this pandemic, and get everybody vaccinated and back to work and back to school, back to work and get things back to the new normal. And that's so it's going to be critical, I think, during this time period."

President Joe Biden signed a new federal mask mandate executive order that requires that federal employees, contractors and others in federal buildings and on federal lands wear masks and adhere to social distancing requirements.He also unveiled a $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” before becoming president that ncludes a program to set up community vaccination centers across the U.S. and use mobile clinics to access hard-to-reach communities.

It has also said it would take steps to make the vaccine free to all U.S. residents independent of their immigration status."The pandemic is his number one priority at this moment," said Dr. Biden. "If we can just come together as a nation and say, you know, OK, maybe I don't believe in wearing a mask, but I'm going to wear it for my neighbor, who is a cancer survivor and, you know, is immune compromised."

(Image Credit: AP)