Dr. Washington on prostate cancer screening in Black and Brown communities

In this video, Samuel L. Washington III, MD, MAS, shares some takeaways from the 2024 American Urological Association Annual Meeting panel discussion “Increasing Prostate Cancer Screening in Black and Brown Communities." Washington is an assistant professor of urology and holds the Goldberg-Benioff Endowed Professorship in Cancer Biology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Transcription:

Could you provide some takeaways from the AUA 2024 panel discussion "Increasing Prostate Cancer Screening in Black and Brown Communities"?

It was interesting to put it together because there is a well-documented disparity in prostate cancer in these groups and in these communities. And we often talk about screening as if it were to eliminate all the downstream disparities that we see. So one of the main summaries/focuses of this discussion was, how do we create action to improve screening, and what that actually means. That's where we're able to demonstrate action that's being taken in different health care systems and different clinical settings, whether that meant engaging communities better to discuss screening, and what comes after screening, or if it's partnering with other groups to create opportunities within communities themselves to do screening, with adequate and appropriate follow-up of the test afterwards. In addition, also, are there other organizations across the country that you could partner with? Would they have opportunities for educational material, opportunities to give more information [to] partner [and] develop action locally, but also that hopefully empowered the audience and people within that space to understand after the screening is done, we still have work to do to make sure all the downstream disparities aren't happening, because screening is only contingent on what happens after you get the results back. We hope to focus on action and empower people to make sure that entire process is improved, rather than just getting more tests with no action afterwards.

This transcription was edited for clarity.