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Mobile prostate screening available Saturday at Tim Barber Walk

(Photo by Alison Hixson for Prostate Onsite Project)
(Photo by Alison Hixson for Prostate Onsite Project)

(Photo by Alison Hixson for Prostate Onsite Project) (Photo by Alison Hixson for Prostate Onsite Project)

With more than half of the 70,000 students attending ASU being male, statistics show that 1 in 6 of these men will get prostate cancer in their lifetime, making it one of the leading causes of death for men.

This unfortunate statistic is one that drives the Prostate Onsite Project tries to raise awareness with events like the Tim Barber Walk, which will be held Saturday at 7:30 a.m. at Kiwanis Park.

CEO of POP Marla ZImmerman said she has a personal connection with the disease. “My father, Gene Felker, made it his mission to spread word of early detection after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer,” she said.

Felker, a former tight end and defensive back for the Dallas Texans, was diagnosed in 1997 during a routine blood test. Unfortunately, the test came back with a prostate cancer diagnosis. Surgery and radiation treatments defeated the cancer, and Felker went into remission.

After realizing that prostate cancer research had very little funding, both for a cure and for treatment, he made it his personal mission to raise awareness, education, and regular testing for prostate cancer by founding the Prostate Onsite Project.

One of the events POP holds to help raise awareness is the annual Tim Barber Walk, supporting Prostate Cancer Awareness Month in September.

Tim Barber was a Tempe Police Detective whose life changed forever when he was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer at the age of 40. Even with the aggressive use of surgery and chemotherapy, Barber passed away two years after his diagnosis.

At the Tim Barber Walk, which is held every year in Tempe, POP provides onsite prostate screenings from two accredited doctors. This year, doctors Ali Borhan and Mark Hong from Affiliated Urologists in Paradise Valley will be administering the exams.

“I had an opportunity to see Tim (Barber) as a patient while he was looking for different opinions in treatment," Borhan said. "The cause is very near and dear to the practice and we are very proud to get to raise awareness for such a preventable issue.”

Both Borhan and Hong agreed that men with a family history of prostate cancer should start getting screened at 40, but men without a family history of the disease should start at age 50 - 55, and should get screened once a year. African-American men should also start screening early as they are proven to be twice as likely to develop prostate cancer than Caucasian men.

“Early detection allows doctors to triage and, more often than not, leads to a successful remission,” Borhan said.

“POP is more about raising awareness for prostate cancer than raising money,” Zimmerman stated. “At the Tim Barber Walk last year, we screened over 3,000 men for prostate cancer."

The Sixth Annual Tim Barber Walk for POP will be held from 7:30 am to 11:00 a.m. on Sept. 27 at Kiwanis Park, 6111 S. All America Way, in Tempe. The first 100 men to register will receive a free prostate exam. Exams will cost $30 for any men over the age of 12 and $15 for children under 12.

"Watching a loved one battle cancer is difficult under any circumstance; watching a loved one battle a cancer or even die from a cancer that could be treated if caught early is unbearable,” Zimmerman said.

 

Reach the reporter at jlsuerth@asu.edu or follow her on Twitter @SuerthJessica

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