Pac-10 officials to wear blue arm bands in support of prostate cancer awareness
Courtesy of the Pac-10 Conference
SEATTLE – Pacific-10 Conference football officials working the five Pac-10 college football games on Nov. 7 will be wearing blue forearm sleeve covers on one arm as part of a prostate cancer awareness campaign in partnership with Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
The message to college football fans and viewers of the television networks broadcasting the games: If you’re a man over age 40, ask your doctor about annual screening for prostate cancer. This advice is in keeping with guidelines issued by the American Cancer Society.
The games that day are Washington State at Arizona, University of Southern California at Arizona State, Oregon State at California, Oregon at Stanford and Washington at University of California Los Angeles. Each game has a seven-man officiating crew.
“The Hutchinson Center is very grateful to the Pac-10 football officials for helping us spread the word about the importance of screening for prostate cancer,” said Kit Herrod, the Center’s director of External Relations. “Prostate cancer is most treatable when it is detected early, so it’s important for men to talk to their doctors about ways to screen for it.”
“Our Pac-10 football officials are proud to be a part of this effort to raise awareness about prostrate cancer screening,” said Pac-10 coordinator of football officiating Dave Cutaia. “Our officials fully support the important work being done by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and are happy to support those efforts.”
The blue arm sleeves were donated by John Kim of JUMPUSA.com. “Jump USA was extremely excited to be a part of this promotion when we heard about it,” Kim said.
“We were inspired by the story of Coach Terry Ennis who touched the lives of so many people in Washington state. We are also excited that the Pac-10 and their officials want to play a role about educating men about this disease.”
Last September, as a tribute to legendary Washington state high school football coach Terry Ennis, the Hutchinson Center teamed with the Washington Officials Association for the second year to use “blue penalty flags” in every high-school and junior-level football game on the weekend of Sept.10 to promote prostate cancer screening awareness. Ennis died in September 2007 following a long battle with prostate cancer.
Some background and facts about prostate cancer, according to the American Cancer Society:
• Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer found in American men, other than skin cancer. Almost 200,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 2009.
• Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men. (Lung cancer is the first.) More than 27,000 men will die of the disease in 2009.
• One man in six will get prostate cancer during his lifetime, and one man in 35 will die of this disease.
• Thanks to screening, the death rate for prostate cancer is going down, and the disease is being found earlier, too.
• African-American men have the highest prostate cancer rates of any racial or ethnic group in the U.S. and are more than twice as likely as Caucasian men to die of the disease.
The Hutchinson Center is one of the nation’s leading cancer research institutions. Its scientists are noted for their work to better understand the causes of prostate cancer and research into early detection and treatment of the disease.
