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Black Men Die of Prostate Cancer at Double the Rate of All Other Races

NNPA NEWSWIRE — “I think that if proton therapy were an option, I think he would still be here,” said Mary Lambert, the widow of Benjamin Lambert IV, in an interview. “We appealed it. We had doctors write letters, we saw different specialists, and they flat out refused. We went to the insurance after it was passed into state law in the state of Virginia and Terry McAuliffe who was governor at the time and he signed an emergency deal to make it law immediately, stating that proton therapy could be held at a higher standard than photon therapy. And they are still refusing to adhere to the letter of the law.”
The post Black Men Die of Prostate Cancer at Double the Rate of All Other Races first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

Published

4 years ago

May 3, 2022

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Virginia Insurer Under Fire for Refusing Coverage of Treatment Despite Law

By Hazel Trice Edney, TriceEdneyWire.com

Benjamin J. Lambert IV, a member of one of the most prominent Black families in Virginia’s public service history, lost his battle to prostate cancer on Monday, June 3, 2019. He was only 52. His father, Virginia Senator Benjamin J. Lambert III, his grandfather, and four uncles also all died of prostate cancer, according to Lambert family members.

The Lamberts are just seven examples of the thousands of Black men per year – from every socio-economic walk of life and every part of the U. S. – who are disparately diagnosed with prostate cancer. Not only is the rate of prostate cancer among Black men higher than Whites, but the chances of Black men dying from it are more than double that of White men and men of other races, according to the National Cancer Institute.

But doctors and medical administrators across the nation believe these grossly disparate numbers can be minimized or at least equalized by one form of cancer therapy that top-level cancer doctors and researchers say could pivot the death disparities. The therapy, called Proton Beam, specializes in zapping cancer cells with laser focused radiation without damaging surrounding non-cancerous tissues. Some of the top medical universities across the nation have proton beam centers; including Harvard, MD Anderson, the Mayo Clinic, and Johns Hopkins.

This is the reason that a list of insurance agencies are currently under fire by cancer advocates across the nation for refusing to cover the cost of proton beam therapy. For example, even after the Virginia General Assembly passed a bi-partisan bill, that encourages insurers such as Anthem, Aetna, Cigna and Humana, to stop labeling the FDA-approved treatment as experimental, Anthem is still under fire for what is deemed as unfair decisions that, in some instances, are believed to have led to deaths.

In doing so, the insurers had been covering the other forms of treatment by radiation mainly because of the lower costs, reported Jeremy Lazarus for the Richmond Free Press as the bill passed through the General Assembly during its spring legislative session of 2017.

The Free Press article quoted Anthem spokesman Scott Golden as saying Anthem stopped covering the therapy after finding “no clear scientific evidence that proton beam treatment for localized prostate cancer is equal to other forms of conventional photon radiation therapy.”

But that was before Virginia’s General Assembly passed the law prohibiting insurers from holding proton therapy to a higher standard in comparison to other therapies. Although the law does not mandate coverage for any specific case, according to Virginia’s Legislative Information System, the law “Prohibits health insurance policies and plans from holding proton radiation therapy to a higher standard of clinical evidence for benefit coverage decisions than is applied for other types of radiation therapy treatment. The measure applies to policies and plans that provide coverage for cancer therapy.”

The Virginia Legislature’s move to make law concerning the issue was mainly because the refusal to cover Proton therapy has baffled cancer experts and advocates alike.

“Proton therapy is a medically necessary, FDA-cleared treatment for cancer patients,” says a report by the D.C.-based Alliance for Proton Therapy Access (APTA). “For many cancer patients, proton therapy is prescribed by their physician and is the optimal and most effective treatment option. Studies have shown that proton therapy can help increase survival, reduce the risk of secondary cancers, result in fewer acute and long-term conditions as well as debilitating short-term side effects and improve quality of life for individuals undergoing cancer treatment,” states the APTA report titled, “Cancer Care Denied: The Broken State of Patient Access to Proton Therapy.”

Daniel E. Smith, executive director of the APTA, says the coverage denials are often shocking and have led to death.

“It’s inconceivable that an insurer would play games with a disease like cancer, where a diagnosis can be a matter of life or death. Cancer patients wait days, weeks, or even months for an opaque appeal process to play out while their cancer and anxiety grow – they must either start treatment without their insurer’s approval and no guarantee of payment, continue waiting, or opt for a cancer treatment that is less effective or poses higher health risks. We can no longer tolerate a process that endangers the lives of cancer patients who don’t have time on their side,” Smith said in a statement to the Trice Edney News Wire. “Our report shows that private insurers deny proton therapy six out of 10 times for patients aged 18-64. While improper denials are reversed a third of the time, appeals take an average of five weeks; and that’s time cancer patients do not have when fighting an aggressive disease.”

The Lambert family pleaded for what they believed could be the life-saving treatments for Benjamin IV.

“I am writing this letter to you, our elected officials in the Commonwealth, in order to solicit your help to save the life of my son,” wrote his mother, Carolyn Lambert, to Republican Sen. Frank W. Wagner and Democratic Sen. Richard Saslaw on Feb. 10, 2017, nearly two years before his death. Our medical team in Arizona has recommended that Benjamin’s best chance at life is with proton therapy. Fortunately for us, there is a proton facility just an hour away from our state capitol at Hampton University.”

Even after the bill passed, Anthem continued to deny the coverage, ultimately forcing the Lambert family to shoulder the cost of the therapy. But by then, it was too late. Benjamin IV’s widow, a nurse and mother of his two children, believes he would have lived had Anthem initially covered the treatment.

Meanwhile, the Free Press article reported that “advocates note that the same insurers that refuse to cover treatment in Virginia are willing to provide coverage for patients that travel to proton therapy centers in other states.”

This apparent discriminate behavior has drawn the ire of Bill Thomas, associate vice president for governmental relations at Hampton University, which has an 11-year-old Proton Beam Center that costed $225 million. Thomas has led the fight in Virginia against the apparently racially discriminate coverage.

“Proton beam is just a therapy. But it’s the best therapy in the world because all the top cancer centers in America have proton beam. There’s nobody arguing with Harvard about this. There’s nobody arguing with Johns Hopkins about this. There’s nobody arguing with MP Anderson about this. They’re arguing with a Black school,” Thomas said in an interview. “The medical efficacy has been proven. The General Assembly took us through a four-year drama of even approving this law, so, all the issues have been discussed, adjudicated, and denied and that’s why they came up with the law. All we’re interested in is for the attorney general for the Commonwealth of Virginia to make Anthem obey Virginia law. It has nothing to do with anything else…Anthem – against Virginia law – did not pay for his insurance coverage,” said Thomas, referring to Lambert’s case.

Thomas continued, “They originally were turning people down point blank, saying that proton therapy was investigational and experimental. That’s a lie. It’s FDA approved. Now let me put that in context. That’s how we got the law passed because the insurance companies were lying.”

Thomas’ view is that with Black men dying from prostate cancer at twice the rate of Whites and others, insurers who go out of their way to deny the prostate treatment at Hampton are considered suspect. About 30 percent of the patients there are Black men, Thomas says.

Besides that, Petersburgh, Va., which is 79 percent Black and less than a hundred miles from Hampton, has the highest death rate of Black men from prostate cancer in the U. S., according to an article reported earlier this year by the Massey Cancer Center at Virginia Commonwealth University. The statistic was a quote from Luisel Ricks-Santi, director of the Hampton University Cancer Research Center.

Whether or not insurers are intentionally discriminating in their decisions about what or who they cover, their conduct is being monitored and documented by the U. S. government, particularly the National Institute of Health (NIH), which has designated Hampton University as a center of excellence for biomedical research.

“Not surprisingly, racial biases continue to impact such decisions, with reports showing that historically, black men undergo less aggressive treatment and more watchful waiting (WW), even after adjusting for socioeconomic status,” states an NIH study. “Within the context of high-risk disease, numerous studies have shown a clear racial variation in the primary treatment of prostate cancer, including more use of WW and lower use of radical prostatectomy (RP) among minorities compared to their white counterparts.”

For many of the families and loved ones of prostate cancer patients left behind, there is no need for proof.

“I think that if proton therapy were an option, I think he would still be here,” said Mary Lambert, the widow of Benjamin Lambert IV, in an interview. “We appealed it. We had doctors write letters, we saw different specialists, and they flat out refused. We went to the insurance after it was passed into state law in the state of Virginia and Terry McAuliffe who was governor at the time and he signed an emergency deal to make it law immediately, stating that proton therapy could be held at a higher standard than photon therapy. And they are still refusing to adhere to the letter of the law.”

Their children, a son and daughter who were ages 9 and 12 respectively when Lambert died, are now in middle and high school.

“I think he would still be here living a full life and contributing to his community and society as a whole,” Mary Lambert said. “At this point, I am just so beat up. I think this is ultimately their goal when they do this stuff. You know, they want you to just accept what they say and go away.”

Smith, of the Alliance for Proton Therapy Access, agrees: “We have worked with far too many cancer survivors who waited days, weeks, or even months, for a broken review and appeals process to play out while their cancer and anxiety grew. It’s time to hold insurers accountable for providing fair, timely, and transparent access to cancer treatment.”

The post Black Men Die of Prostate Cancer at Double the Rate of All Other Races first appeared on BlackPressUSA.

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

2 days ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

5 days ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke

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PRESS ROOM: NBA Hall of Fame Nominee Terry Cummings Joins 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to Launch Victory & Values Initiative

NNPA NEWSWIRE — NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th.

Published

5 days ago

February 27, 2026

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Cummings becomes an honorary member, joining other role model sports stars

NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings has officially become an honorary member of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County, marking a powerful new chapter for the 100 Black Men and youth development across the region.

Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th. The moment signified more than membership — it marked the launch of the organization’s transformative new platform, the Victory & Values Initiative.

The Victory & Values Initiative is a groundbreaking youth development program designed to empower elementary and middle school students through a dynamic blend of sports, mentorship, and STEM exposure. The initiative focuses on building health, discipline, character, leadership, and access to opportunity — creating pathways for long-term academic and personal success.

“This is about more than sports,” said Cummings during the ceremony. “It’s about using the platform of athletics to teach life lessons, create access, and build the next generation of leaders.”

The induction ceremony also featured notable guests including NASCAR’s newest Star Driver, Lavar Scott and NASCAR Director of Athletic Performance, Phil Horton, who joined Cummings for a powerful Victory & Values Town Hall discussion. The Town Hall was moderated by renowned Sports Emcee John Hollins and focused on leadership, resilience, discipline, and the importance of mentorship in shaping young lives.

A “Day at NASCAR” for 75+ Youth

Cummings wasted no time getting to work. On his first full day as an honorary member, he joined his new brothers of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to host a “Day at NASCAR,” escorting more than 75 youth to a once-in-a-lifetime experience at EchoPark Motor Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway).

The youth participants received behind-the-scenes access including: an exclusive tour of Pit Row, access to the Garage Area and exploration of the interactive Fan Zone.

The experience culminated with a surprise meet-and-greet and Q&A session with NASCAR Superstar Bubba Wallace, who shared insights on perseverance, preparation, and breaking barriers in professional sports.

The day served as a living example of the ‘Victory & Values’ Initiative in action — exposing youth to new industries, expanding their vision for the future, and connecting them directly with high- level mentors and role models.

Building Leaders Through Access and Mentorship

The 100 Black Men of DeKalb County – a chapter of the largest, national mentoring organization in the county – continues to expand its footprint with programs focused on academic excellence, economic empowerment, leadership development, and health & wellness.

The launch of ‘Victory & Values’ represents a strategic expansion of the organization’s impact

intentionally integrating athletics and STEM to engage youth at an early age while reinforcing core principles such as integrity, accountability, teamwork, and perseverance.

“Our mission has always been to mentor the next generation,” said Vaughn Irons, President-Elect of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County. “With Terry Cummings joining the brotherhood, along with partners in NASCAR and professional sports, we are creating unprecedented access and exposure for our youth. Victory & Values is about turning inspiration into structured opportunity.”

By connecting elementary and middle school students to professional athletes, executives, STEM professionals, and community leaders, the initiative aims to:

Increase youth exposure to careers in sports business, engineering, and performance science
Strengthen mentorship pipelines
Promote physical wellness and mental resilience
Build character-driven leadership at an early age

Open Invitation to Youth and Families

All youth are invited to participate in the Victory & Values Initiative, along with the other countless, impactful programs offered by the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County.

Parents and guardians seeking mentorship, leadership development, academic enrichment, and transformative exposure opportunities for their children are encouraged to connect with the organization.

As NBA Legend Terry Cummings’ induction demonstrates, Victory & Values is more than a program — it is a movement designed to build champions in life, not just in sports.

For more information about the Victory & Values Initiative or to enroll a student, contact: 100 Black Men of DeKalb County at Phone at 404.241.1338, info@100bmod.org or Tee Foxx at 404.791.6525,