Ali Torre, wife of legendary baseball manager and prostate cancer survivor Joe Torre, has teamed with the Prostate Cancer Foundation to launch Women Join the TEAM Approach, a campaign urging partners and caregivers of men with prostate cancer to become active in the treatment decisions of their loved ones. In particular, Torre will encourage men with prostate cancer to seek the advice of an integrated team of health care professionals – a urologist, radiation oncologist and medical oncologist – to ensure that all available treatment options are fully explored and an optimal treatment plan may be implemented.“I learned through my husband’s experience with prostate cancer that assembling a full team of medical specialists is crucial in gaining the best possible treatment outcome,” said Torre. “We also learned that our communication and support of each other was our own ‘double play’ against the disease. Today, I call on the partners and caregivers of men with prostate cancer to become educated, active and join your loved one’s healthcare team,” she added.
Research shows that the involvement of a partner in healthcare decisions is often positively associated with better outcomes for prostate cancer survivors. It has also shown that wives may enhance the quality of decision-making by gathering information, helping the patient to ask questions, or helping advise them about treatment decisions. Torre’s goal is to help partners and caregivers learn from her experiences in supporting loved ones with prostate cancer. Through not only her husbands, but also her father’s prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment, Torre became acutely aware of the vital role she played in their healthcare decisions.
Women Join the TEAM Approach is part of an ongoing public awareness program, It’s a TEAM Approach: Prostate Cancer Treatment, Education, Awareness and Management, that urges men with prostate cancer, their partners and others in the support network to identify a multidisciplinary team of specialists who can best determine the course of action for the disease.
“The TEAM Approach involving a variety of specialists has become standard in treating other cancers, such as breast, colon and lung cancer. However, prostate cancer treatment has lagged behind other cancers where multidisciplinary teams of physicians collectively guide treatment" said Dr. James McKiernan, Assistant Professor of Urology at Columbia University Medical Center and Attending Physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia. “We need to do a better job of educating men with prostate cancer not to wait until their disease has progressed to a late stage to seek the advice of a medical oncologist, and of changing our approach in the management of prostate cancer by combining the specialists early on to benefit the patient.”
During Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, select baseball teams throughout the country will participate in raising awareness about the TEAM Approach in the fight against prostate cancer.
“With the incidence of prostate cancer on the rise, men with prostate cancer need to be proactive in their search for the right physician team so they may obtain the information they need to make the right treatment decisions.” said Leslie D. Michelson CEO of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. “Better coordination among specialists can possibly lead to better outcomes for men with prostate cancer.”
For a list of tips for partners and caregivers and additional information about the Women Join the TEAM Approach program, log on to www.prostatecancerfoundation.org or call 1-877-MEN-7877. Women Join the TEAM Approach is a collaborative initiative between the Prostate Cancer Foundation and sanofi-aventis. This awareness program is sponsored by sanofi-aventis.
About Prostate Cancer
In the United States, prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men and the second leading cause of annual cancer deaths, following lung cancer. An estimated 230,000 American men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2005. That's enough to fill a baseball stadium four or five times. One in six American men will develop prostate cancer. A man is 33 percent more likely to develop prostate cancer than an American woman is to get breast cancer. Over the next decade as baby boomer men reach the target age for the diagnosis of prostate cancer, it is anticipated that new prostate cancer cases will increase to 300,000 per year.
About the Prostate Cancer Foundation
The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) is dedicated to finding better treatments and a cure for recurrent prostate cancer. Since inception in 1993, the PCF has become the world's largest philanthropic source of support for prostate cancer research. The PCF has raised more than $230 million and funded more than 1,200 critical research projects in more than 100 research centers around the world. For more information, please visit www.prostatecancerfoundation.org.
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