Members of the local Afro-Caribbean community were invited to a Church in the St. Anne’s area of Nottingham on Monday 5 December to take part in a Play Domino Talk Prostate event run by our United Against Prostate Cancer (UAPC) project team.
They heard talks from Dr Bola Owolabi, Director of Health Inequalities at NHS England, Julian Barwell, Consultant Clinical Geneticist at University Hospitals of Leicester and Bria Mcallister (opens in a new tab), Urology Nurse Practitioner at Nottingham University Hospitals, followed by Caribbean food and very lively games of Domino!
The idea behind the events, which were originally developed by the late Pamela Cambell-Morris (opens in a new tab) and Leicester’s Centre for Ethnic Health Research (opens in a new tab), is to raise awareness of the increased risk of prostate cancer among African and African-Caribbean men, who have a 1 in 4 chance of developing it compared to 1 in 8 for the general population.
Reflecting on the event Dr Owalabi said: “Who would have thought it? A humble Domino board acting as community convening tool, raising awareness of prostate cancer and engaging communities in Genomics conversation”.
Before the event on Twitter Julian Barwell reflected: “So proud of the UAPC project. Apart from training community champions and outreach events, I am delighted to announce that BRCA testing of prostate tumours is now established. We are now finding mutations, potentially important for patients and their families. This is a big step forward”.
Earlier the same day Dr Bola visited the labs at University Hospitals of Leicester where tissue samples are prepared before being sent to our Genomic Laboratory Hub (opens in a new tab) in Cambridge where colleagues look for gene changes that could indicate an increased risk of prostate cancer. Dr Bola praised the “hard work colleagues do to get high quality results and treatment to people in a timely manner”.
To find out more about the project email project lead Maria Echevarria.