November 22nd, 2023

Black men in Boston are increasingly dying from prostate cancer

Mark Kennedy is trying to change that

Mark Kennedy’s journey in public health began in 2002 as he drove around a custom-made mobile clinic equipped with the tools necessary to invite thousands of patients in, have their blood drawn, do prostate examinations and make comments on the spot about what the examination reported. Before then, he was a business consultant. Now he gets approached on the side of the road by men who tell him, “You saved my life.”

Kennedy, 69, has spent the last two decades saving the lives of Black men who have a 73% higher chance of being diagnosed with prostate cancer than white men do. He advocates educating these men about the hazards of prostate cancer and providing them access to screenings, rather than placing them on a thousand-man waitlist.

Black men are increasingly dying from prostate cancer at about 2.1 times the rate of other men for reasons that remain unclear, which is why Kennedy took it upon himself to spend a decade screening about 5,000 men who would otherwise have not been given the chance. His mission is to put in place a stable healthcare system that will target communities that don’t have the level of resources necessary to schedule and fund a doctor’s appointment.

“Black men have a significantly higher incidence of prostate cancer than white men and other ethnic groups, and they die at about two and a half times the rate,” said Dr. James Jacques Carter, a physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and one of Kennedy’s colleagues. “One of the reasons for that is access to healthcare and earlier diagnoses, and the proper kind of education.”

Kennedy’s work in the public health sector over the past two decades stems from this social determinant, and the fact that African American men have an increased vulnerability to prostate cancer.

“Not only is this lopsided, but it’s lopsided against me because it’s a male disease, and the males that are suffering the most are guys like me,” Kennedy said. “That intrigued me, and that’s why I wanted to do this work.”

Dana-Farber

Kennedy joined Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 2001 as researcher in the Center for Genitourinary/Prostate Oncology, working under Dr. Phil Kantoff. His work led him and a colleague, Tim Gilligan, to NStar where they spoke with employees about prostate cancer. Their goal was to find a way to encourage men to get screened for prostate cancer.

When Dana-Farber hired Kennedy to run their custom-made mobile clinic, their purpose was specific for groups of people who needed medical guidance.

“Part of the program at Dana was to go to communities (with) underserved people that we knew weren’t getting access to care and weren’t coming in to be screened, and to put on this free program to offer them education and screening — that was the mission,” said Dr. Carter, who was the medical director of the clinic.

The “big ol’ bus,” as Kennedy described it, was created with a $1.2 million grant from the Gillette company. The staff screened and educated about 5,000 men over the course of the 10 years across Boston, Rhode Island and Cape Cod. 

“(They chopped) it up into three areas,” Kennedy said of the bus. “The first area was a classroom, the middle area was a bank of computers with a wireless link back to Dana-Farber and the back area was going to be an almost-to-scale exam room.”

Day after day, Kennedy and his colleagues worked hard to bring in men for screenings who would not otherwise make the decision to do so themselves. One of the few reasons patients were hesitant was because of the rectal examination required during the procedure, according to Carter. However, the men soon realized that the structure of the mobile clinic was something to take advantage of.   

“Those kinds of community-based programs are very important that allow you to get services without you having to worry about who’s going to pay the bill,” said Carter. “It made it easier for a lot of people to come on.”

Patients still approach Kennedy decades later to say, “I would not be alive if it wasn’t for you.”

Kennedy was born at the Boston City Hospital and grew up in Boston during the civil rights movement. After studying at an experimental school in Cambridge named the Morse School until the third grade, he and his mom moved to Boston, where he tested into the Boston Latin School in 1965 with a nearly perfect score.

“It was an exemplary experience from an educational perspective,” Kennedy said in an interview. “I was trained through the lens of leadership from the seventh grade on, I just didn’t know it at the time.”

In 1971, despite others expecting him to attend Harvard University, Kennedy graduated as one of the eight Black men in his class and decided to go to Tufts University with a full scholarship. He studied political science with a minor in history. 

Post graduation, Kennedy worked as a business consultant for a little more than a decade until Dana-Farber first came on as his client and then invited him onto their team. From there began his 20-year-long fight against prostate cancer as an advocate for cancer education and early detection.

After working at Dana-Farber for 13 years, Kennedy went on to be the first ever executive director for Massachusetts Prostate Cancer Coalition for two years. From there, he got a job at the Prostate Health Education Network, working under founder Tom Farrington, which focused specifically on Black men in the prostate cancer space, and is the leading prostate cancer education and advocacy organization.

Fortunately, it was during these job transitions that made Kennedy realize something major about Boston facilities.

“Something was missing,” he said. “Boston does not have the kind of programming and resources in the cancer early detection space that I would love to see them have.”

So, when Kennedy got the chance to do something about this lack of resources, he jumped at the opportunity and joined the Boston Public Health Commission.

“If you’re in public health it’s not about the money, this is about doing something for my city that has not yet been done,” he said.

Early detection program

Currently, Kennedy is working on creating a comprehensive early detection program for the City of Boston. His plan focuses on groups of people with limited access to screenings and includes a three-tier plan: public-facing communication, doctors and advocacy.

“The difference between public health versus population health is how specific segments of the population are experiencing cancer differently from everybody else,” Kennedy said. “I want to focus on the ones that don’t have the same level of resources — that’s my passion.”

As another pair of eyes on Kennedy’s program, Moulika Anna Hitchens, a student at Harvard Chan School of Public Health, noticed the importance of his three-tier plan in reference to realistic problems in Boston’s medical scene. A major drawback in cancer treatments is a lack of resources and sufficient time to meet with the number of patients that need to be screened.

“The Department of Health’s job is to say people should get tested for early detection, but then at MGH, they have a 19,000-person waitlist to get a colonoscopy,” Hitchens said. “I can see how important Mark’s work is because it is a balance of ‘yes population, go get tested, but also you have to wait.’ So how do we work around this? How do we move forward? How do we find solutions?”

Through his plan, Kennedy hopes to make the screening processes more efficient so residents can first learn about prostate cancer, then actually be helped.

“Mark is focused on the community and understands the importance of this whole issue, but he’s also focused on the disparities in healthcare and knows that things have to be done differently,” said Carter. “Since screening in this country is done for average risk people, we have to make changes to now deal with high-risk people.”

More so, Kennedy aspires to advocate for both the people who are left behind in cancer prevention and the people who are enduring the effects of the illness.

“Unless I’m deceased, I’m never going to stop doing this work,” Kennedy said.

Black men's health, health, Mark Kennedy, prostate cancer