Since the 20th century, individuals across the globe have set aside time to celebrate awareness days or months, usually used to raise awareness of illnesses, disorders, diseases, etc., that affect significant percentages of populations. One of the most popular of these months is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which falls in October.

Breast Cancer affects one in eight women throughout their lifetime and is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, and has become a movement among women everywhere to get annual screenings to protect their health.

While these conversations dominate the media as awareness months come and go, there are certain causes that often go overlooked or unknown. Stigmas like mental health have slowly inched towards the forefront, but other issues and causes that call for awareness remain a silent poison for their victims.

One of the most dangerous of those causes that goes unseen is prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer deaths in America, and the most diagnosed cancer among men in 118 countries. 

Among the number of prostate cancer victims in the U.S., Black men have a higher fatality rate than any other ethnic group, which has led some to spread awareness.

On a visit to N.C. A&T’s campus, author and university professor, Joseph Graves Jr., conducted a panel surrounding his book “Why Black People Die Sooner: What Medicine Gets Wrong About Race and How to Fix It.”’

During the panel, Graves discussed the importance of transparency when dealing with cancer types like colon and prostate cancer, and the need for black men to get screenings for them sooner rather than later.

“It’s a necessary procedure that everybody, certainly my age group, should be having. It’s not a question of embarrassment, it’s a question of how long you want to live,” he said.

The chances of developing any form of cancer tend to increase with age, but it can still be found in early adulthood and childhood. The same is true for prostate cancer.

A 2016 study, originally published in Current Urology, found that approximately 10% of new prostate cancer diagnoses in the U.S. occur in men under the age of 55. Though it could have been attributed to the general increase in cancer screenings among men, there has been no true point to attribute the rise of early-onset prostate cancer that isn’t clinically observable.

Several other diseases and conditions often go underdiscussed in the black community, including heart disease, sickle cell anemia, kidney disease, diabetes, etc. Each carries its own health risks when not given serious consideration or proper medical attention, and has generally been stigmatized within the black community.

Graves Jr. made a clear call to action in response to the devastating impact of these risks through expanded awareness of such sensitive topics.

“We need to be mature, and we need to be honest about what health disparities look like and which communities are being impacted by specific diseases,” he said.

Whether it’s young adults first experiencing independence and the college lifestyle or those experiencing the drastic biological changes of life’s later stages, it’s essential to embrace the necessity of checking for prostate cancer and other harmful diseases while they’re preventable.

Those uncomfortable conversations and doctor visits could prove to be one of the last barriers to increasing the survival rates among marginalized communities when facing some of the most difficult challenges life can bring.