Promoting Cancer Screening

Dr. Keith Plowden

With a church-based initiative in Baltimore, alumnus Dr. Keith Plowden is encouraging black men to be screened for prostate cancer—the group’s second-leading cause of cancer death.

Dr. Keith Plowden, R.N., was not always fond of going to see his doctor. When Plowden was in graduate school, his doctor had an office right in the neighborhood, but Plowden rarely went to see him. Surprising behavior—for a nurse.
 
“I didn’t like the way he treated me when I would come in for a checkup,” Plowden recalls. “The doctor’s attitude toward preventive care was, ‘If you’re not sick, why are you here?’” 
 
His doctor implied, perhaps unintentionally, that a man caring about his health is somehow not a “manly man.” “That’s not a good way to prevent illness—or to encourage men to take an interest in their health,” says Plowden, who earned a Ph.D. in Health Services from Walden University in 1996.
 
Everyone needs to be encouraged to have regular checkups and preventive exams, says Plowden, assistant dean of undergraduate studies at the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore. “Black men especially need to be encouraged,” he adds.
 
There are numerous and long-standing health disparities between black and white men, most notably for cancer. “Black men get more cancer and are more likely to die from it,” Plowden says. Plowden is researching ways to narrow those gaps, specifically for prostate cancer which, according to the National Prostate Cancer Coalition, affects as many as 25 percent of African-American men and is the second-leading cause (after lung cancer) of cancer deaths in that group.
 
With a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, Plowden is studying the effectiveness of a faith-based intervention that encourages black men to have prostate cancer exams.
 
“Black men are less likely to be screened for prostate cancer than white men,” Plowden says, “and they are more likely to be symptomatic when they do finally get screened.” They are also more likely to have an aggressive form of the disease and to die from it, he notes.
 
The intervention is based out of 10 local churches. As part of the study, local faith leaders appoint prostate cancer survivors in their churches to be peer counselors to their fellow male congregants. The counselors talk about their cancer and encourage other men to get prostate cancer exams. “The counselors have the knowledge and have ‘walked the walk’ so to speak,” Plowden says. “The black men in the church appreciate talking with a peer who has been there, who can tell them what the exam is like.” The study continues through 2007. If study participants are found to have prostate cancer, Johns Hopkins Hospital will provide necessary follow-up as needed. Participants may also elect to have follow-up through their primary care provider.
 
Plowden has been recognized for his research. He recently was awarded a Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Recognition Award from the University of Maryland. In addition to his research and academic duties, Plowden has a clinical practice at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
 
He says he first entered nursing to earn money to pay for medical school, but discovered that he enjoyed the work and the nursing practice philosophy and knew nursing was his vocation. For his dissertation at Walden, he examined how patients’ perceptions of nurses’ caring behaviors (for example, eye contact, tone of voice, touch and physical presence) affected patient care at a VA medical center.
 
Plowden says he is interested in health disparities because he is a black man and because it’s possible to save lives with proper interventions.
 
People in general, and especially in the black community, are increasingly aware of the importance of preventive care, he says.
 
“It wasn’t very long ago that men didn’t talk about prostate cancer at all,” Plowden says. “But times are changing.”