Groups fight stigma around prostate cancer prevention, care among Springfield men
Updated: Mar. 09, 2025, 5:03 a.m. | Published: Mar. 09, 2025, 5:03 a.m.
By Dave Canton dcanton@repub.com
SPRINGFIELD – Archie Emanuel, Jr., a Vietnam-era veteran, remembered the day he received his diagnosis.
“I had all the blood work and the urologist found out I had cancer,” he said. “It hit me so hard. Cancer! Here I just found my soul mate and I just got engaged.”
Emanuel was quiet for a moment.
“I had no idea that I could have it. If my fiancé had not asked me to go for a physical exam I never would have known.”
Fifteen years later, Emanuel still marvels at her reaction.
“I went home and said, ‘I have bad, sad news. I have prostate cancer,’ and she looked at me and said, ‘I got your back.’ That was all I needed to hear,” he said.
Like many men with prostate cancer, Emanuel had no inkling that he could have the disease. He felt nothing nor showed any symptoms. Had he not had a PSA blood test to screen for it, he would have never found out perhaps until it was too late.
“Black men are about 60% more likely to get prostate cancer and are two-and-a-half times more likely to die from it compared to white men,” said Dr. Faina Shtern, president of the AdMeTech Foundation in Boston. “Prostate cancer strikes one in eight men. It is just as common as breast cancer in women. It is just that prostate cancer has never gotten the same kind of attention.”
AdMeTech Foundation is a nonprofit created in 1997 to increase public awareness of prostate cancer and provide prevention programs, advance medical research and advocate for additional research and equity. Black and brown men in Springfield have a higher incidence of prostate cancer than any place in the state.
“In our state, Black men are facing more than twice the risk of dying from prostate cancer than their white counterparts,” said state Rep. Bud Williams, whose district makes up part of the city. “The National Cancer Institute says Springfield presents an even more critical situation, with the highest statewide mortality rate from prostate cancer just among Black and Hispanic men.”
Williams was able to secure a $1.25 million allocation in the state 2025 budget to be used for prostate cancer awareness, education and research.
“The funding is through the Department of Public Health with the bulk of the money going to AdMeTech Foundation to allow them to leverage existing partnerships with other state-funded nonprofits to increase awareness,” Williams said. “Prostate cancer is one of those diseases that if you get it early, it can be more easily treated. It is one of those cancers that early detection and testing is so important.”
To Williams, early detection means better outcomes, something Shtern agrees with. She said there are two types of cancer: metastatic which can quickly spread to other organs and needs to be aggressively treated, and adenocarcinoma, or slow-growing, which may need no treatment at all.
“For very low-risk cancers, we saw a four to six times increase in completely noninvasive approach to what we call ‘active surveillance,’ meaning we monitor men, carefully observing,” she said. “Because of the precise diagnostic tools developed over the last decade or so, we saw a lot of men who used to have biopsies no longer need them, and a lot of men who (used to get) aggressive treatment no longer get treatment at all.”
It has been 15 years since Emanuel received 12 weeks of radiation treatment that knocked his cancer into remission. Today, he tells his story as a mentor with MOCHA, Men of Color Health Awareness, a group of Black men dedicated to helping Black and brown men and women address health issues specific to them.
“I was lucky. I was in the first stage,” Emanuel said. “I didn’t go (to the doctor) before because I didn’t want to know what I could have. Now I tell people, ‘What about your family members? Stop being selfish. They love you. Go and find out.’ We try to make men aware of their responsibility. We give them tools to fight the health disparities, give them information and empower them to fight.”
Shtern said the new diagnostic procedures offer a lot of opportunities.
“Over the last decade, we have seen an incredible proliferation of transformative precision diagnostic tools. All the issues about false positive tests or false negatives of the PSA have shifted to the dustbin of history,” Shtern said. “We have such incredibly precise tools, for example, imaging such as MRI or blood tests, urine tests, tissue tests that we can use to find genetic markers.”
Gone are the days when the primary screening method was a digital rectal exam performed by a doctor.
In Springfield, MOCHA continues with an aggressive approach to health education for the Black and brown community. Attend any community event and you will find the MOCHA tent front and center, complete with brochures and several members eager to talk about men’s health. MOCHA works closely with AdMeTech Foundation to get testing to Black men in Springfield, and sponsors seminars and presentations throughout the community offering medical information.
For MOCHA Program Director Lamont Scott, prostate cancer presents two issues at the same time: the racial and social aspects of the disease and the sexual implications that drive men’s fears.
“(The Black community) has some of the highest rates, the numbers are really high,” he said. “There are quite a few reasons why. One is because of the stigma associated with it, but we found out that in Western Mass., men are not going to their doctors or urologists to get their yearly checkups. That is especially bad for those who have some family members who have had it.”
The stigma Scott refers to stems from the prostate’s role in male sexual performance, making it difficult for men to talk about.
At one time, prostate cancer was potentially a death knell for a man’s love life. Early radical surgical interventions left some men impotent and/or incontinent, no longer able to perform sexually or control their urine flow. No matter how unlikely that was, the overriding fear men have of their performance in bed made the prostate a “no-go” in many men’s eyes.
However, the evolution of tools for diagnosing and treating prostate cancer makes it far less likely that horrific outcomes are necessary. That is not to say that radical interventions can be necessary, but Shtern said that only points to the need for early diagnosis and treatment when an ever-growing range of approaches from chemotherapy to radiation, immunotherapy or hormone treatments can be brought to bear.
But Black and brown men are suffering from prostate cancer at higher rates than white and Asian men and some researchers feel that is because of genetic differences; others say it is cultural.
Ask Scott why men of color are affected so drastically by prostate cancer he will tell you a lot has to do with Black male culture. Men of color are suspicious of the medical community.
“There are a lot of reasons why,” he said. “Some of it is because of that Tuskegee controversy years ago. Men don’t like going to the doctor.”
According to the Center for Disease Control, in 1932 almost 400 Black men who had untreated syphilis were studied by researchers in the U.S. Public Health Service. The study went on for 40 years observing how the disease progressed and how it affected the subjects. The men were never offered treatment or even told treatment was available. The study ended in 1972.
The Tuskegee incident threw a shadow of suspicion over the medical community for Black and brown men ever since, Scott said.
“I think there is a trust issue. Black and brown men, we don’t really like going to the doctor. If we feel there is nothing wrong, then we don’t want to go. If anything, we tend to look to our women as our caregivers. If they say we should go then we will,” he said.
Shtern does not take sides in the genetics versus culture debate, but recognizes that both have camps in the medical community.
“There is very lively and intense debate in the medical community,” Shtern said. “If you look at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network which consists of over 28 leading cancer hospitals in this country and represents leading clinical and science experts, they believe that what dominates disparity are social factors rather than genetic factors. At our major medical educational event in September, some of our experts felt pretty strongly that there are genetic differences between white and Black men.”
According to Johns Hopkins Medical, fully 85% of men with prostate cancer are diagnosed through testing rather than visible symptoms. However, men who experience any of the following should follow up with their physician: Frequent urination, which is most likely the result of an enlarged prostate. It is common among men 40 or older but should be noted when talking with your physician. Difficulty starting a urine stream or interrupting urine flow should be discussed as should painful or burning urination and blood in the urine.
