Annual Report of Accomplishments and Goals

                   PROSTATE CANCER SUPPORT ASSOCIATION OF NEW MEXICO ANNUAL REVIEW MEETING DECEMBER 19, 2015

THANKS

To start this annual review I’d like to recognize the members of the Board of directors for the many VOLUNTEER hours they put in to make this organization work.

• Jerry – Newsletter, website, and computer working generally.
• Dave – Has been assisting Jerry with newsletter and website.
• Jan –Keeping our minutes.
• Charles – Treasurer keeping our books and making sure we are solvent.
• Eli – acting as assistant treasurer and helping where needed.
• Gary – Keeping up with our outreach efforts.
• Joe – Library.
• Steve – working on technical issues principally making DVD’s of our presentations and trying to get coverage of our activities in the media.
• And –I’m Lou and as Chairman of the Board I have the unenviable task of herding this group of cats and seeing that we meet our objectives. THANK YOU GUYS
• I’d like to also thank the Board’s wives and my wife especially for supporting our efforts on behalf of PCSANM. THANK YOU.
• Finally this is an organization for the members and many members step-up to help the organization – especially for our newsletter preparation and helping out at our Annual Conference – THANK YOU TOO.

PCSA OBJECTIVES

I’d like to remind the folks today that the objective of all our programs is the support of the prostate cancer patient and the education of New Mexicans about Prostate Cancer.

I’d like to talk about this year’s educational efforts first.

EFFORTS TO EDUCATE THE PUBLIC ABOUT PROSTATE CANCER

• Participation in Health Fairs – 15 Fairs – Several in town, several on Pueblos, some quite far from Albuquerque including Raton, and one in Mosquero, Harding County- way out in the plains.
• In June we had a presence at an Isotopes game supporting Cancer awareness.
• We held a terrific PCa conference that the public was invited to – we had 85 total people present but only about 65 were there to hear the talks, the rest were workers, vendors, and speakers. We keep getting acknowledgements for this conference.
• Three of our members volunteered to help at the Lovelace Radiation Clinic.
• We are active members of the Albuquerque Cancer Coalition the people who publish the pamphlet on Statewide Cancer Support and Treatment directory. A new edition is going to press right now and a Spanish edition is in the works

SUPPORTING THE PROSTATE CANCER PATIENT

• We were able to give guidance to 44 newly diagnosed and recurrence PCa patients.
• We had 23 new members sign-up. Overall our number of members have remained about the same
• .We have held 23 support meetings during the year, counting this one and the annual conference. We did not hold one on July 4.
  • We had a s few as 12 and up to 33 attendees at those meetings. This is a slightly higher attendance than 2014.
  • The meeting topics were diverse as having only sharing sessions, to videos of topics of interest, and many excellent guest lecturers including;
    • Dr. Smith on Advanced Cancer treatments
    • Jayme Runyon on the Role of Nurse Navigator
    • Tom Kirby from Lovelace on Radiation Physics
    • Dr. Guos on Current and future radiation practices
    • Sarah Conterras on Caregiving
    • George Frazier on Fitness for the aging Male
    • Dr. Lindberg gave his annual review of PCa treatment developments.
    • Pharmacist Damien Lucero gave a review of Rx
• We have made an effort to upgrade our library with new publications. Some of them are :
  • • Dr. Ablin’s “The Great Prostate Hoax” where he complains about the misuse of his discovery of PSA testing to help discover PCa in a patient.
    • John Hopkins Annual review of developments of in prostate treatment.
    • Moyad’s Promoting Wellness beyond hormone therapy.
    • ACS – Family Caregiving manual.
    • Wasserberg, Walker ,Robinson- A Guide for Androgen Therapy.
    • And finally
    • Alan Lawerenson – An ABC of Prostate Cancer in 2015. The book covers this Australian’s world- wide search for his prostate cancer treatment. He chronicles his quest and he has created a handbook for the patient trying to make a treatment decision.
• We have published four editions of our newsletter and have mailed out over 900 copies to our members and interested parties statewide.
• We have placed copies of the newsletter and along with other literature in doctor’s offices and clinics.

NEXT YEAR’S PROGRAM

The program for next year is in an early stage and has not yet been totally formulated. Our first meeting will be on January 2 and will have a video from the 2014 PCRI Conference in LA on Radiation Therapy for intermediate and High Risk PCa, subtitled Radiation Therapy and Evidence based Medicine. A very interesting talk by Dr. Anthony Zietman. Followimg that on January 16, we will have a field trip to the Sandoval Regional Medical Center in Rio Rancho to see their MP-MRI unit and during that trip for the Ladies there will be a visit to their Mammogram Unit. On Feb 6 we have Karen Kunz from Myriad Genetic Labs tell us about the genetic testing capabilities of the Prolaris system. We have invited Dr. Arap to our Feb 20 meeting but he has not yet replied. We are inviting our members to attend the Cancer Support Now Annual (free) Conference in lieu of our March 5 meeting.

IN CONCLUSION,

Not quite last, but not least either thanks to your generous support supplementing our DOH grant and grants from other medical organizations I want you to know we are financially solvent and seem to be managing well.

We look forward to the future to continue supporting the prostate cancer patient with the good material in our newly diagnosed packet, share our experiences with our treatments and continuing our efforts to get the word out about his disease.   If you want to take an active role in our efforts we’d really like to have you join our Board – “Many Hands Make Light Work”

Lou Reimer

Chairman of the Boardhttps://www.pcsanm.org/annual-report-of-accomplishments-and-goals/?et_fb=1#