Aug 17, 2008 7:30 am US/Eastern
Md. Churches Urge Men To Get Prostate Test
BRYANS ROAD, Md. (AP) ―
The preacher's words took flight in a small Pentecostal sanctuary in southern Maryland, where men are dying needlessly of a treatable disease.
"Your body is special to God!" Bishop James M. Briscoe declaimed to 45 Sunday worshippers in the pews above the weathered linoleum floor of Free Gospel Church of Bryans Road. "God has not designed this thing for you to die prematurely!"
So began a public health campaign to educate, examine and treat the men of Charles County as prostate cancer becomes a disease that is striking and killing them at an alarming rate. Men, black and white, in southern Maryland's largest county have the highest prostate cancer diagnosis and death rates in the state, and significantly above the national average.
A group of health officials, local activists and a tenacious state lawmaker have set their sights on what they say is a more urgent mission: educating thousands of men about the disease and screening and treating for free hundreds of low-income men, who are most at risk.
Experts are hailing the $280,000 program that began in June -- a shoestring budget by the standards of bigger public health studies -- as a potential model for low-income communities. Instead of scientists in faraway labs, the community is leading the way.
The journey begins in the pews of the county's black churches, where on a summer Sunday, Briscoe told his congregation that the long-awaited prostate cancer money had arrived. "It's for the underinsured and the no-insured!" he said before announcing that he had been tested to set an example.
As Mark Douglass, a deacon at Free Gospel put it, "It's not a fun test," referring to the rectal exam that goes with the blood test to screen for the disease. But after his screening a few months ago, Douglass told the guys at work they should get checked.
One who took his advice discovered cancer.
The Ministers Alliance of Charles County and Vicinity, local health officials and Claudia Baquet, a doctor and specialist in health disparities at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, approached Thomas M. Middleton, the county's longtime state senator.
Middleton persuaded state health officials to contribute $82,000 from Maryland's tobacco restitution fund. More money came from the county and from Baquet, who is using a research grant from the National Cancer Institute.
Health officials hope to reach 2,000 men at health fairs, ethnic festivals, barbershops and, of course, churches, screening perhaps 200. A converted schoolhouse in Waldorf will serve as the health clinic, to create a more personal setting than a hospital.
Unlike mammograms, which have been shown to reduce death rates from breast cancer, the effectiveness of prostate tests is debated by cancer specialists. But for now, it is what's available.
The nagging question for health researchers is why the county's cancer rate exceeds that of Prince George's or Baltimore, communities with far larger black populations.
"In the long term, we want to know the root of the disparities," Baquet said. "In the short term, we're seeing a population that's saying, 'I did not go in for screening because I didn't have insurance' or 'I was afraid.' While you're waiting for all the answers, you can't just do nothing."
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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