Findings

Congress finds the following: (1) Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the United States with 1 in 44 men dying from prostate cancer and more than 35,700 men estimated to die from prostate cancer in 2025. (2) Prostate cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in the Nation with 1 in 8 men being diagnosed in their lifetimes, 3,300,000 men in the United States living with a diagnosis, and over 310,000 men estimated to be diagnosed in 2025. (3) The survival rate for prostate cancer diagnosed in early stage is near 100 percent but prostate cancer diagnosed in late stage has only a 37-percent survival rate. (4) There are few, if any, symptoms of prostate cancer before it reaches late stage. (5) African-American men have a disproportionately higher rate of prostate cancer and are 70 percent more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than White men, with 1 in 6 African-American men developing prostate cancer in their lifetimes. (6) African-American men are 2.1 times more likely to die from prostate cancer than White men. (7) Men with a father or brother with prostate cancer are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer than men without a family history. (8) The common clinical definition for men at high-risk of prostate cancer includes African-American men and men with a family history. (9) Most of the major cancer and urological societies recommend beginning screening discussions earlier for African-American men and those with a family history of prostate cancer. (10) The United States Preventive Services Task Force has encouraged research on screening African-American men, including whether to screen African-American men at younger ages, and has identified this research as a high-priority cancer research gap. (11) Barriers to screening should be minimized for high-risk men in order to catch asymptomatic prostate cancer before it metastasizes and the survival rate is dramatically reduced. (12) The cost of treating metastatic prostate cancer in the United States health care system is hundreds of millions of dollars more annually than the cost of treating localized, early-stage cancer.