procure is helping prostate cancer patients through some of the darkest days of their lives
laurent proulx, ceo of procure, on what men need to know about getting tested and navigating treatment for prostate cancer.
9 minute read
procure, founded in 2003, developed a biobank so researchers could track a patient's prognosis long-term.
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prostate cancer is one of the most survivable forms of the disease in the world — but only if it’s caught early. when this happens, 91 per cent of men can expect to live at least another five years, according to the canadian cancer society. when it doesn’t, just three in 10 men can hope to say the same.
screening for the disease is obviously vital but a number of factors, including the reluctance of men to get tested and a pandemic that prevented them from doing so anyway, has health care workers dreading an impending wave of new cases. fortunately, there are a number of organizations across the country that are doing their best to raise awareness of the disease and help patients through the difficult days that follow diagnosis.
one of these groups, a small, quebec-based organization called procure (an amalgam of prostate and cure), has raised more than $30-million to combat the disease over the past 20 years while also supporting men throughout what can be a painful process. laurent proulx, the ceo of procure — and a prostate cancer survivor — took some time out of his busy schedule to talk about the disease, their efforts to help men in need and his hope for a day when his charitable organization is no longer needed.
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can you tell me a little about procure? how long have you been around? what do you do?
procure was founded in 2003 — it’s our 20th anniversary this year. it was started because there was a lack of information on prostate cancer, mainly in french. they decided to make it different from other non-profits by building a biobank. so, instead of just funding research like most non-profits do, they built an infrastructure that identified 2,000 men with prostate cancer and followed them for 10 years. that was pretty innovative 20 years ago. because of this, today we’re able to supply material — including prostate, blood and urine samples — to researchers to analyze those samples and say, ‘well, these men died from prostate cancer, these men did not.’ i was a part of that biobank; i got involved after i was diagnosed [with] prostate cancer. i found it really innovative in the sense that you’re helping by contributing something from men who actually have the disease.
we also provide information: we have a website that gets around 100,000 visits per month, from all across canada and europe. the quality of this information is a key factor and we have developed a lot of tools for men because, as you know, men don’t necessarily talk about prostate cancer. the last part of what we do is raise awareness of the disease. we have various campaigns: there’s one in the spring with father’s day and we have our bowvember campaign in the fall, where we sell bow ties to help support our activities.
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are you comfortable talking about your own prostate cancer diagnosis?
sure, that’s why i got involved. i got prostate cancer in 2008 when i was 48. i found that people weren’t really talking about the disease. i have two sons and the risk for them to be diagnosed with prostate cancer has increased by two- to fourfold. i got involved because i thought that prostate cancer was something that affected old men that were out of shape. i’m a triathlete and i’ve done the boston marathon a couple of times, so i didn’t feel like that was going to happen. it was a wake-up call for me, but also for those around me. today, it’s part of my awareness speech where i say this can happen to anyone.
were they able to catch your cancer early?
at the time, the it company i was running took out a life insurance policy on me because i was the founder. that forced me to get an annual checkup when i would not have done so otherwise. the doctor saw that my psa (the protein in the blood that can be indicative of prostate cancer) was going up rapidly over a two-year period. it was not necessarily that high but the velocity was too fast for my doctor and that created an alert for me to get a biopsy. this eventually led to a prostatectomy and i gave my prostate to procure’s biobank. i was then followed by the biobank for 10 years and i haven’t had a recurrence of the cancer.
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after i got involved with the biobank, procure asked me to be on their board. shortly after that, their ceo was leaving and they asked if i could help in that role. i told them i would give it three years and i’m in my 10th year now, so i found there was a lot of work to be done. i have an it background, so i’m able to help procure get involved with new technologies and help prepare them for the next venture.
can you tell me a little more about your bowvember campaign?
the idea is for men to buy one of our bow ties — or a box of four to share with other people. each year, we offer a unique version that you won’t see anywhere else. its purpose is to get people asking why you’re wearing that bow tie. it’s a good conversation starter. everyone knows about movember and we did participate in that, but we needed to finance our own activities. we found a way to be disruptive in the sense that you can wear a moustache if you want, but if you wear a bow tie, you’re helping something canadian that is involved with canadian men and provides services to them. the idea was to be different, to make a statement. and being present in november is important for us — we’re usually able to raise over a million dollars in that month and that helps finance our activities.
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what are the biggest challenges facing people with prostate cancer?
i’m always asked the same question by men and that is about selecting the method of treatment for their cancer. it’s difficult for somebody that just got diagnosed to choose to either get an operation or radiotherapy. they also have to rely on the information they get from their doctor or even just the research they do on their own. we really wanted to position ourselves as a reliable source of information. getting diagnosed with prostate cancer is a shock and then you have to quickly determine which treatment you’re going to select and that’s a big burden on patients.
there’s also a taboo that comes with the disease because it can have an impact on performance; a lot of people think it’s an issue that only affects older men. and men don’t always act on the symptoms they might have — they hope they will go away on their own. men will typically react much more quickly to a yellow light on the dashboard of their car than to a yellow light on their health profile. they’ll call the garage the next morning to get their car fixed but they won’t necessarily do that for their health.
are there any other issues that you frequently hear about from the patient community?
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i think the two main issues that men are concerned about with regards to treatment are the potential for incontinence and erectile dysfunction. and if you’re talking about younger men, the idea of erectile dysfunction is something that might affect the decisions they make. men also have to realize that they can’t expect to feel like a 20-year-old again after having an operation to remove their cancer. if you’re 60 years old, you can’t expect to suddenly perform like you’re 20 again, even if you have never had prostate cancer.
what sort of assistance do you provide to patients?
we have a support line of nurses that are available seven days a week to answer calls from patients. five minutes after being diagnosed in 2008, i was out of the doctor’s office. they gave me a book and said, ‘well, go home and choose your treatment.’ when you wake up two days after the shock of that, you have a lot of questions and the doctor isn’t there anymore. we tell patients that we’re there to support you. we’re not there to challenge the doctors; we’re there to help you through the process of selecting your treatment or to help you ask your urologist questions because, the next time you meet, you’re going to have a lot of questions. we’re also there to help them answer some of those questions. we have a committee of urologists that validate everything we put out there. we have a lot of ways for patients to get the information they need.
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over-diagnosis and over-treatment can be a concern with prostate cancer — how do you help patients navigate this issue?
the first thing they need to do is discuss the disease with their doctor and determine the best form of treatment for them. there are a lot of different options available and they can all be valid depending on your condition. we’re not there to make this decision for patients, that’s not our role. we support them through this process. the biggest concern, after the shock of the diagnosis and the discussion of side-effects, is the choice of treatment. you should feel like you can challenge the advice that is being given to you and you need to make sure you understand why your doctor feels a certain treatment is the way to go. you need to understand what you’re going to go through along with the side-effects and everything else that comes with it. we’re here to help with that.
do you think that prostate cancer is becoming more of a chronic illness than a disease?
in some cases, i would say so, but when you lose someone to prostate cancer it’s hard to say it’s a chronic illness, you know what i mean? obviously, the survival rate is greater than other cancers and that helps a lot. i think our efforts to raise awareness have helped reduce the number of deaths because people were waiting too long to get checked out. unfortunately, the pandemic left many men outside of their health networks for two years and now we have patients that have metastatic prostate cancer. that’s a worry that i have, that many men waited too long and the system pushed them away — for a valid reason — but now they’re going to have a much more complicated disease than they might have had prior to the covid-19. so that’s a big worry for us and it’s probably going to take five to 10 years to recover from the side-effects of the pandemic.
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can you foresee a day in our lifetimes when prostate cancer might no longer be an issue?
today, we’re doing a lot of the same treatment for everyone. i think that, down the line, we’ll be able to have more personalized medicine where treatment is specific to an individual. your treatment won’t work for everyone but it will work for you. that’s where i think things will end up over the next 10 to 15 years. and i hope that we’ll get better at diagnosing prostate cancer and determining which patients need to be treated. i’m not saying prostate cancer is going to disappear, but if you can determine which cases are going to progress, then you can treat only those ones. but i am hoping for the day when the work we do will no longer be necessary.
for more information about procure and the work they do to help men across canada and around the world, you can visit their website here. you can also reach their support line seven days a week at 1-855-899-2873.
dave yasvinski is a writer with
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