On Watch: Veterans Raise Awareness of Prostate Cancer Among their Ranks
By StoryStudio on January 2, 2024 12:50PM
When Thomas F. Seymour, Jr. was first diagnosed with prostate cancer, naturally, his first thought was: How am I going to survive this?
But as the shock wore off, and he was able to come to terms with his disease, Seymour turned to more practical questions. Like a true U.S. Navy veteran, Seymour wanted to know: How am I going to defeat cancer? What are my options to fight this?
“I was in a life-or-death situation. I chose life. That’s what I wanted,” says Seymour, a survivor based in St. Louis. “I realized that I’m not immune from this, and nobody else is immune either.”
SPONSORED BY Pfizer
We founded Veterans Prostate Cancer Awareness to answeR questions. We want to provide a consistent and secure source for men. We believe that the power of accurate educational resources can actually save lives. And it’s intended to save lives.
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DISCOVER
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No one is safe from prostate cancer, even the men and women who have sacrificed so much and fought for and served our country. In fact, one in every five veterans will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, nearly twice the national average. And almost a quarter of them reside in rural communities, where there may be limited access to VA facilities or other kinds of healthcare.
That’s where Veterans Prostate Cancer Awareness, or VPCa, steps in. It’s a non-profit dedicated to saving lives by promoting prostate cancer awareness and early detection, promoting the latest technologies available for treatment and cure of prostate cancer, and providing educational resources to our veterans, active-duty military, and all men.
“When I was first diagnosed with prostate cancer, what went through my mind was, ‘When am I going to die?’ ‘What’s going to happen to my family?’ ‘Am I prepared?’” says Mike “Bing” Crosby, founder of VPCa, U.S. Navy veteran, and prostate cancer survivor. “We founded Veterans Prostate Cancer Awareness to answer all those questions. We want to provide a consistent and secure source for men that can help them answer all those questions. We believe that the power of accurate educational resources can actually save lives. And it’s intended to save lives.”
“Part of the impact that we hope to achieve through the partnership with VPCA is not only raising the awareness of prostate cancer among veterans, but also ensuring that they and their care partners are aware of resources that exist to support them in their journey,” says Hensley.
Ultimately, Pfizer and the VPCa want to do more than just be a resource for veterans. They want to empower veterans and men, in general, to become their own health advocates.
Since his own diagnosis, Seymour has taken the initiative to help the VPCa reach out to other veterans and help them the way the organization helped him.
“I am glad that I was exposed to the VPCA, because I look at it as an opportunity to be able to communicate with other veterans as an advocate and tell them what they need to do to defend themselves,” says Seymour. “Because once you become a prostate cancer survivor, you can be a life saver. And that’s what veterans do: We save lives.”
More than just disseminating information, VPCa wants to educate men and women about the importance of screening for prostate cancer and the drastically improved chances of survival if the disease is detected early on. One of the VPCa’s stated goals is to have no veteran be diagnosed with metastatic disease on the first diagnosis.
“If you get real, actionable information that you can apply to your life and go to the doctor one time, you’re going to find this disease early,” says Crosby. “It’s going to really simplify your journey through prostate cancer.”
But getting this information out there and raising awareness in these rural areas is easier said than done. And so is getting many men to go to the doctor in the first place. That’s why VPCa has found help in scaling their messaging to a broader audience, enlisting the power of Pfizer.
“Our partnership with a firm the size of Pfizer is critical to our success,” says Crosby.
For instance, Pfizer has been instrumental in getting the word out among veterans in underserved rural areas, that the VA has a Community Care Network designed to extend quality healthcare to veterans outside of their communities when needed.
“It essentially allows veterans to access healthcare outside of VA facility if they live in a rural area or if the VA doesn’t offer a service that the veteran might need,” says Susan Hensley, Senior Director Advocacy & Professional Relations at Pfizer. “There was very low utilization of this program among veterans. They didn’t know about it.”
With the help of Pfizer, the VPCa has been able to create and distribute these important educational materials and resources to veterans and to healthcare providers.
Learn More
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1. American Association for Cancer Research. Cancer Incidence in the U.S. Military Population: Comparison with Rates from the SEER Program. Accessed on October 20, 2023. https://aacrjournals.org/cebp/article/18/6/1740/66901/Cancer-Incidence-in-the-U-S-Military-Population