Free Prostate Cancer Screenings Available Sept. 26
It’s Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. The Regional Cancer Partnership of Illinois (RCPIL) will provide free prostate cancer screenings from 5 -7 p.m. on Monday, September 26, at the Sangamon County Department of Public Health, 2833 S. Grand Ave. East, Springfield.
Appointments for the screening event, which includes a prostate-specific antigen test (PSA), blood test and digital rectal exam by a physician, can be made by calling 217-535-3100, ext. 3744.
The event is open to men between the ages of 40 and 70 who are not under the routine care of a urologist, who have no history of prostate cancer, and no history of a radical prostatectomy.
Celeste Wiley, chair of the RCPIL, said the exam “is an opportunity for men between the ages of 40 and 70 to take care of your health. Cancer diagnosed at an early stage is treatable and beatable.”
According to the 2015 Illinois Department of Public Health’s State Cancer Registry, an estimated 7,700 new cases of prostate cancer in Illinois will occur in 2016. An estimated 1,150 men in Illinois will die of this disease.
Prostate cancer in Illinois is the second overall leading cause of cancer death in men, exceeded only by lung cancer. Black males develop prostate cancer at a higher rate and are more than twice as likely to die of prostate cancer as men of other racial and ethnic groups (IDPH).
Members of the Regional Cancer Partnership of Central Illinois include: American Cancer Society, Central Counties Health Centers, Illinois Emergency Management Agency - Radon Division, Illinois Department of Public Health, Logan County Health Department, Mia Ware Foundation in Jacksonville, Passavant Area Hospital in Jacksonville, Regional Cancer Center Memorial Medical Center, Sangamon County Department of Public Health, Sangamon County Medical Society, Simmons Cancer Institute at SIU, Springfield Urban League, St. Francis Hospital in Litchfield, St. John's Hospital Cancer Institute, Blessing Hospital in Quincy, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
