Challenges Facing Prostate Cancer Equity

Brandon Mahal, MD, an assistant professor at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, discusses challenges facing prostate cancer equity.

According to Mahal, there are only 3 well-established prostate cancer risk factors: age, family history, and race. Mahal notes that while race is a social construct, the factors driving race such as culture and environmental influences are very real. They inform race, which creates the social structure.

In order to better understand prostate cancer risk factors, we must better understand race, according to Mahal. It shouldn’t be that race is the underlying driving factor, but what is driving race, such as the environment and structural racism. According to Mahal, physicians must themselves to understand the factors driving race. By doing so, the field will have better knowledge around what drives prostate cancer risk.