PROSTATE PROS invites Alex Scholz, CEO of the Prostate Cancer Research Institute (PCRI), to discuss how the PCRI helps educate men and caregivers. Scholz gives us a look inside the PCRI’s annual and mid-year patient conferences, the PCRI helpline, and all the ways they provide free, expert-reviewed information on all aspects of prostate cancer.

ABOUT THE PCRI: The Prostate Cancer Research Institute’s mission is to improve the quality of prostate cancer patients’ and caregivers’ lives by supporting research and disseminating information that educates and empowers patients, families, and the medical community.

Register for the 2019 Patient Conference: pcri.org

Dr. Scholz: Welcome to PROSTATE PROS podcast we’re guiding you to treatment success and avoiding prostate cancer pitfalls. I’m your host, Dr. Mark Scholz, here with my co host, Liz and today’s guest, Alex Scholz.

Alex: Thank you it’s really great to be here.

Liz: Dr. Scholz, can we get some insight first into what the PCRI is, since you are one of the original co-founders?

Dr. Scholz: Yeah the PCRI was founded by Dr. Steven Strum and myself. Over 20 years ago to help patients learn about prostate cancer. As everyone has learned already, prostate cancer is very complex. And it’s a strange throwback, the world of prostate cancer, sort of a backwards industry because it is the only type of cancer where surgeons are operating in the primary care position. So, Dr. Strum and I, being medical oncologists, thought early on that it would be very helpful to provide education resources for patients as they are reflecting on all their many different treatment options. Our first employee was Harry Pinchot, called “Helpline Harry.” Harry would answer phone calls from all over the country from men who are interested in selecting their different treatment options.

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Liz: We’ve talked a little bit about the support men get at the PCRI conferences. I wanted to follow up on that with Alex Scholz who is the CEO of the PCRI. Welcome, Alex, we are glad to have you today.

Alex: Thank you so much for having me.

Liz: Alex, I’d love to hear a little bit more about the helpline, but the 2019 Patient conference is coming up fast, so can we talk a little bit about that first?

Alex: Absolutely. September 6th, 7th, and 8th we have the prostate cancer patient conference and there’s a lot of conferences out there on prostate cancer but what sets this conference apart is that it is absolutely, 100% designed with the patient and the caregiver in mind. Our job is to make sure their questions get answered and there is a lot of information in prostate cancer around lifestyle, side effects, and treatment and we want to make sure that they get to have their questions answered by experts. So from all over the world we have experts coming in those types of treatments, in those types of situations to guide these patients to the right choices for themselves.

Liz: So, I went to the mid-year conference in March and it was my first experience with PCRI and I got to sit in on a couple of talks. I was getting the answers to questions I didn’t really know I had. And a lot of those I didn’t know a lot about where I didn’t know a lot about testosterone and hormone therapy. So, I’m curious in the annual conference if there will be more on that or what topics are you covering?

Alex: Yes, there will. So, our job at the September conference, you mentioned the mid-year that’s in March. So, we have two conferences every year, one in the spring and one in the fall. And the fall conference is really designed to cover all topics of prostate cancer, so we will be covering testosterone, hormone therapy side effects, we’ll be covering advanced treatments, you know active surveillance with Gleason 6, there is no aspect of prostate cancer that isn’t covered. And how that is designed is through our staging system. The audien