$3.8 Million Donation to Mount Sinai to Support Accessibility to Prostate Cancer Screening for Black Men
Posted: Thursday, February 25, 2021
A $3.8 million donation was recently gifted to the Milton and Caroll Petrie Department of Urology at Mount Sinai by philanthropist Robert F. Smith to increase accessibility to prostate cancer screening for Black men. The American Cancer Society reports that although one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, Black men are twice as likely to die of the disease. In partnership with the Mount Sinai Health System, the funding will help launch the Robert F. Smith Mobile MRI Unit.
“The idea for the Robert F. Smith Mobile MRI Unit was in response to a major health problem—the higher incidence and mortality of prostate cancer in Black men,” said Ash Tewari, MBBS, MCh, Chair of Urology at the Mount Sinai Health System and the Kyung Hyun Kim, MD, Professor of Urology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in a press release. “Reasons for this include access to health care, the environment, comorbidities, and even specific molecular pathways in the body for Black men.”
The Robert F. Smith Mobile MRI Unit will officially launch in New York City at the end of summer 2021. It will address the high incidence of prostate cancer in the Black community by taking the following steps:
- Joining forces with local community partners in New York City to raise awareness about the disease and the mobile unit’s offered services
- Setting up prostate screening appointments at the mobile MRI unit in highly concentrated Black neighborhoods across New York City
- Scheduling follow-up visits as needed for patients with Mount Sinai Health System urologists.
