A little more than a year ago, the folks at Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford, CT, became alarmed at the disproportionately high death rate among African-American prostate cancer patients. So, they established the Curtis D. Robinson Men's Health Institute to look into it. On Monday, the Robinson Institute went a step further and established a relationship with the cancer research program at Tuskegee University in Alabama to delve even deeper into the prostate cancer death disparity.
The Associated Press reports that the Robinson Institute will provide data samples to Tuskegee to see how prostate cancer is passed on in African-American men and to try to predict which cancers will be more aggressive. Jeffrey Steinberg, medical director of the Connecticut institute, called the partnership a "leading-edge, very novel approach" to finding a cure for prostate cancer.
"The significance of this partnership is historic," Roberta Troy, founding director of Tuskegee's Health Disparities Institute for Research and Education, told AP. "To establish a partnership between an historically black university in the South and a major hospital and heal institute in the northern region of the United States to combat prostate cancer will have a great impact on the health outcomes in African-American men."
The two institutes will also cooperate in outreach and educational campaigns about prostate cancer.
- read The Associated Press report