PROSTATE CANCER: Group Screens Underserved Communities
The Summit Medical Center Ethnic Health Institute is working to prevent prostate cancer deaths in minority communities by expanding prostate screening. The institute last year began an "ambitious effort" to reduce high chronic disease and death rates in minority communities, the Oakland Tribune reports. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among Filipinos, Japanese and Latinos in the US, and the disease kills black men at a rate twice as high as white men. But non-white men from low-income communities are among the "least likely to be tested" for the disease. Frank Staggers, chair of the institute, said he does not know what effect the institute's early detection program has had on the death rate, but "we do know we have changed the amount spreading to the lymph nodes and bones." The institute began coordinating the effort with health care providers, community groups and local sports teams in February 1997. The institute holds free prostate exams every September with the Watson Wellness Center (Hudson, 4/20).
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