The University of Hawaii at Manoa was awarded $3.1 million in federal funding from the National Cancer Institute for its Multiethnic Cohort Study, which focuses on understanding cancer’s effect on different ethnicities.

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz’s office announced the award in a press release on Thursday.

“If we’re going to end cancer once and for all, we need to understand why different races and ethnicities seem to have varying susceptibility to cancer,” said Schatz, a member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. “It’s fitting that this announcement of funding comes around the 55th anniversary of President Kennedy’s speech committing to sending Americans to the moon. Ending cancer is our moonshot, and this funding takes us one step further in our pursuit.”

The study, established in 1993, is being conducted at the UH Cancer Center in Honolulu as well as the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. It examines lifestyle risk factors, especially diet and nutrition, as well as genetic susceptibility in more than 215,000 people primarily of African American, Japanese, Latino, Native Hawaiian and Caucasian origin.