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Editor: Bart Chan - Design: Thierry LagrinThe Voice supplement › page 19/20/29/30

INSIDE› Rose Thompson talks p20

› Breast cancer hope p30

PROSTATE CANCERBlack men still suffer worse outcomes

Rose Thompson (left) with Diane Abbott MP

HEALTH MATTERS

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By Bart Chan

TRAGEDY CAN be a major setback for a person. Yet it may also become a cat-alyst to drive them

to strive for something that did not seem possible be-fore. Rose Thompson has certainly not allowed her loss of loved ones from can-cer to diminish her ambi-tion to bring about greater equality in cancer treatment for black and ethnic minor-ity (BME) communities.

The professional radiolo-gist, who spent over 26 years in the NHS, knows her work in tackling BME access to cancer treatments and care is an “ongoing” fight. She began at a time, in 2009, when the struggle was only getting started, and now she sees her young social enter-prise, BME Cancer Commu-nities, as “punching above our weight.”

Thompson, who lost her mother and twin sister to breast cancer, is currently directing her energy to helping men beat prostate cancer, hoping they initi-ate the fight by being diag-nosed, or “captured” as she likes to call it, before ag-gressive forms of the cancer kick in.

MOTIVATED“Cancer for us is a relatively new thing, in comparison to the white community, and that really is because of the younger population,” the social enterprise director tells Health Matters.

“With prostate cancer we’re entering into that age group where a lot of people are coming to or are over 50 and this is my generation.”

Again, it is personal ex-perience that partially mo-tivated her to write the recently published report Hear Me Now, which ex-plores the cancer and the challenges black men across the UK face when seeking help about the condition.

“One of the things that prompted this is that we have had close friends we’ve lost to it, and they’re not elderly people,” says Thompson, who identi-fies as “unmet” the needs of BME men in getting the right treatment at the right time.

The report, which con-tains a foreword written by David Lammy MP about prostate cancer, looks into why the most common can-cer among men is revealing a stark difference between the outcomes of black and

white men.Black men in the UK are

30 per cent more likely to develop the cancer, and yet their death rate is “alarm-ing,” Thompson says.

In 2009, she conducted a project in Nottingham when the Primary Care Trust invited her to engage the city’s large African Caribbean population, and spread the message about prostate cancer. “I brought the information there and showed them the evidence,” Thompson says of her time working on six events over two months.

“I expected there would be something targeted after that, but it didn’t happen.

“What was alarming to me is that Nottingham has the second highest death rate of prostate cancer across the country, after Shropshire, which is a place with a lot of older men where you would expect death rates to be higher.

“So I have to ask ques-tions, and in that report we’ve got a high observa-tion of black men in the West Midlands, Manchester, and we need something to be done by the local author-ities in public health that is in true partnership with the community organisations.”

The issue of raising aware-ness, the crucial weapon used to battle prostate can-cer, is not just something Thompson reserves for the community; health profes-sionals like doctors, GPs and nurses are also targeted by her.

Furthermore, her work fills the gap of what the

NHS cannot some-times do. “The NHS is quite stretched anyway, so often we pick up work when the nurses can’t get out. Some-times it works well when you’re working with NHS professionals, sometimes it does not.”

Despite her close work with cancers affecting only women, Thompson knows which strategies to employ when dealing with a cancer that only kills men.

She takes men to events

with stories of their own experience of prostate can-cer. She mentions Wayne Marston, who is featured in the report. His father died two weeks after being diag-nosed with the cancer; the son then learned he was in the early stages of the dis-ease.

BEGINNING“When 45, [Marston] had a slightly raised PSA test [re-sult], and it triggered further examinations, even though he didn’t think he had any symptoms, he was in the

early stages of prostate cancer,” Thompson explains of the survivor who speaks at the awareness raising events she organises.

The cancer equality leader has also helped to establish a support group network for African Caribbean men in Nottingham called Friends and Bredrins. “We regularly get a good turn-out, be-cause we are in touch with the community.

“What is starting to hap-pen here is that when one

man tells another man, and when we tell them what their rights are, then we’re beginning to get more peo-ple diagnosed, so when they go to their doctors they talk about prostate cancer and it gets picked up,” she adds.

It is no surprise that Thompson requires the skills of time management, for there are numerous plates she must keep spin-ning. And securing money to carry on is a vital one.

“We’re steadily growing, we’re still quite young, but we’re punching above our

weight. If we could get more funding, obviously it would make quite a difference, and that’s the thing I have to focus on, as well as doing the cancer information and awareness raising.”

In addition, Thompson has to work on the bigger picture, and not merely fo-cus on regional and local-ised problems with access and awareness. Her goal is to connect the regional dots and create a national net-work of support groups for men dealing with prostate cancer.

“For me, the BME work has only just begun,” she declares. “We are still get-ting stories from people in London who weren’t aware; our work is ongoing.

DECISIONS“We cannot stop raising awareness, because even in America, where there has been a massive amount of prostate cancer awareness raising, they have captured a lot of people earlier, but still black men are two and a half times more likely to die than white men in America.

“So somewhere along the line, something happens be-tween diagnosis and death, that is actually a significant inequality.

“Something is happen-ing where decisions about treatment are being made, maybe choosing not to have treatment, like my mother – my mother was praying for divine healing.”

Cultural competence is a term which Thompson has taken for her own by defin-

ing it differently to those looking into the BME com-munity from the outside. “When people who are not BME focus on cultural com-petence, it’s often on what people believe, and culture is you do this when some-body dies. But for me, cul-tural competence is actually being aware of the fact that there is evidence that some ethnic groups are more like-ly to be affected by specific cancers.

“The evidence has been out there for many years now. So when a doctor sees a BME patient, there should be a red flag that he needs to check. So cultural confi-dence is about being up-to-date with up-to-date infor-mation.”

Thompson’s report is a document she wants every GP to receive in order to help realise greater equal-ity of access, and also re-fresh doctors of their duties. “I’d like more doctors to be aware of their training that early prostate cancer does not have signs and symp-toms, and so it’s not ap-propriate if a man comes asking for prostate cancer, to say, ‘Have you got any signs or symptoms,’ and then make a decision as to whether they can go on to have checks based on signs and symptoms,” she says.

INEQUALITIES“There is something called the prostate cancer risk management programme, and all we want is for doc-tors to follow that.”

Hear her nowRose Thompson talks about her generation, her mission to com-bat cancer inequality and raise awareness about prostate cancer

AWARENESS DRIVE: Wayne Marston, left, Rose Thompson and David Lammy

“So somewhere along the line, something happens between diagnosis and death, that is actually a significant inequality ”

29MARCH 28 - APRIL3, 2013 THE VOICE | HEALTHMATTERS

Did you know the risk of stroke is higher if you are Black and of African or Caribbean origin?

Stroke Association explains why the campaign is vital for our community.

Q. What is a stroke?A stroke is a brain injury caused by a blockage or bleed in the brain. Since the brain controls and directs the rest of the body, the damage caused by a stroke can affect many of its functions, also the way we think, our ability to learn and how we feel and communicate.

Despite being a treatable condition, stroke continues to be the third leading cause of death in England and the largest cause of adult disability. It does not need to be this way.

Q. Why is the risk of stroke higher in our community?A person’s risk of having a stroke is affected by age, family and medical history. There is a prevalence of diabetes and high blood pressure in our community, which are risk factors for stroke. So if there is a history of these conditions in your family, your chance of having a stroke is also higher.

Additionally, lifestyle factors such as smoking, excessive drinking of alcohol, high salt intake, a diet high in fat, lack of exercise and being overweight or obese also play a big part.

Q. How do you recognise the symptoms of stroke?The campaign explains that people should look for: FACIAL WEAKNESS - Can the person smile? Has their mouth or eye drooped? ARM WEAKNESS - Can the person raise both arms? SPEECH PROBLEMS - Can the person speak clearly and understand what you say? TIME TO CALL 999.

Acting FAST as soon as stroke symptomspresent themselves can not only save lives but potentially limit long-term effects.

Q. Any final words of advice Jacqueline?There are many things that you can do to improve your health and help reduce your risk of stroke. These include lifestyle changes such as giving up smoking, eating a diet low in fat and salt, taking regular exercise and cutting back on alcohol. However, in the event you or your loved one does experience a stroke, remember the FAST test.

To find out more information about this campaign please go to: nhs.uk/actfast stroke.org.uk

Orville Dixon, stroke survivor from London.

“I was going to workone morning, I had a headache but thought it would go away. The pain became constant and got worse as time went by, it was such an intense, sharp pain. I also felt a tingling sensation down the side of my body and did not feel my usual self.

I have lived with diabetes for a long time and found out that this can be a contributing factor to stroke. After my stroke, my lifechanged dramatically, I was unable to walk and my speech was affected. However, over time my speech has improved and I can walk. I will be getting married this year!

I urge everyone to seek medical advice and to let one another know if you are feeling unwell. Familiarise yourself with Act FAST, whether you are old or young. You could save someone’s life.”

CAct FAST Stroke Awareness

As the NHS launches its Act FAST Stroke Awareness Campaign, Jacqueline Anderson,

The difference between black men and the rest of the general population is an aspect Thompson does not forget to highlight.

“For some white men, they have very slow growing prostate cancers, they call them ‘pussycats’, but with black men, they’re more likely to have the aggres-sive type of prostate cancer – they call them ‘tigers.’

“For black men, we can-not take the statistics that have been done for white men. You cannot apply re-search done on white men and apply it to black men,” she adds, before emphasis-ing one of her greatest chal-lenges: the ethnic data col-lection gap.

“It’s been a huge prob-lem for years, it’s one of the greatest health inequalities, and not just for cancer,” Thompson says.

Possessing the right data underpins the whole opera-tion, for it provides the nec-essary evidence that must be exhibited to secure fund-ing, and it further helps the patient make the best deci-sion, she believes.

“We have to give every patient an informed choice, and I think some of that choice may be taken away

from some men, in that men over 50 are entitled to go to their GP and ask questions about their prostate gland, but some men say they have difficulty in getting their GP to listen to them and to refer them on.”

CHURCHESThis is something that may be down to ageism, she says, adding that “anecdotal evidence does not seem to be matching” the portrayed picture that GPs are thor-oughly helping BME pa-tients explore every eventu-ality of prostate cancer and its diagnosis.

“We need to catch it be-fore there are symptoms, because many of our men by the time they’ve got symptoms it could be too late.”

Hear Me Now concludes that despite the fact that campaigns have been waged to raise awareness; the follow-up action leaves a lot to be desired. “I’d like to see some funding going into churches and commu-nity organisations to work in collaboration with the experts, and people like us who know our communities, to change this,” she says.

“I am concerned that GPs

NURSES UNITE:Rose with Phillipa and Lucy from the British Association of Urology

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New method of detecting aggressive breast cancer

Scientists hope new development will help at the diagnosis stage

By Bart Chan

TRIPLE NEGATIVE breast cancer is more likely to mean a high level of a biomarker

which makes the aggressive form of the cancer easier to target with drugs, a recently published report has said.

The finding, published in the British Journal of Can-cer, was made up by tests carried out by Austrian and Greek scientists who exam-ined 170 tumour samples with triple negative breast cancer – a more aggressive, but less common form of

the disease.

7,500 WOMENTheir tests found that

more than 50 per cent of the women sampled showed high levels of the MET bio-marker, a protein which is integral to helping cells grow but becomes dysfunc-tional in cancerous cells. Furthermore, women who had a level of 33 per cent, compared to a lower level of 11 per cent, were three times more likely to suffer breast cancer reoccurrence in the following five years.

Each year, 7,500 women are diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer, yet

their treatment is compli-cated due to it not contain-ing the common receptors, like oestrogen that are tar-geted by standard treat-ments.

“Our findings suggest that

levels of the MET biomarker in a patient’s breast tumour could be an important way of predicting the best type of treatment for women

with triple negative breast cancer,” said Professor Mar-tin Filipits, the study’s au-thor who works at the Med-ical University of Vienna.

“This aggressive type of breast cancer is harder to

treat as the tumours don’t have the receptors that the common drugs can target – blocking the growth of the tumour.

“But knowing which women have high levels of this molecule in their breast tumours could help doctors to adapt the type of treat-ment they’re given.

DIFFICULT“Levels of this biomarker

could also give an idea of how likely the cancer is to come back,” he added.

Dr Julie Sharp, senior science information man-ager at Cancer Research UK, said: “Triple negative breast cancer can be very difficult to treat but this interest-ing research could open up the possibility of new ap-proaches to monitor and

treat this aggressive disease.“Last year a Cancer Re-

search UK study found that even among patients with the same type of breast can-cer, such as triple negative, no two women’s tumours will be exactly the same. What we call ‘breast cancer’ is in fact at least ten differ-ent diseases, each with its own molecular fingerprint, and each with different weak spots.”

She added: “This is a chal-lenge and we continue to support research that aims to identify these weak spots and develop better treat-ments for all types of breast cancer.”

are making judgements on out-of-date informa-tion. We cannot base de-cisions for patients based on old information.

“I don’t want to be bashing communities and health professionals in the recession; everybody is overworked at the mo-ment and it’s pretty tough in the hospitals.”

DYSFUNCTIONSpeaking directly to

black men, Thompson says they must realise the gravity of their situation and how much more sus-ceptible they are to the condition. “Black men do need to take the symp-toms seriously. Some men don’t think their

symptoms are serious enough, but the whole point of early interven-tion is to catch it before it becomes serious,” says

Thompson, before issuing a plea to the wives and partners who could be af-fected by the losses she went through.

“I’m saying this to the women as well; you can make an appointment for your man. Particularly if he’s getting up and going to the toilet in the middle of the night, and, it’s one of the things people don’t realise, if he’s got erectile dysfunction.”

Knowing full well the cost of when failure in healthcare access occurs, Thompson says: “I think this is all about saving lives. We have a win-dow of opportunity to do that.”

Prostrate cancer continued from page 29

SURVIVOR: Wayne Marston active campaigner

MODEL SUPPORTER (left): Leah Weller at a breast cancer event,

X-RAY VISION (top): A doctor examines a breast scan

AWARENESS RIBBON (bottom): Supporters gather in solidarity

“This aggressive type of breast cancer is harder to

treat ”