What began as a mission to educate men about prostate cancer has snowballed into the largest men's health conference in Utah history and drawn Bob Dole as keynote speaker.
"The conference is a very timely accident. We never intended it to develop into all this," said Dr. Steven Gange, a urologist who is chairman of the cancer society's Prostate Cancer Task Force and is organizing the conference.Gange said organizers planned to hold a public education forum. Then he wrote Dole, the former U.S. Senate majority leader and former presidential candidate, and asked him to speak, and Dole accepted.
"All of a sudden we had an event on our hands," said Gange.
The Men's Health & Fitness Exposition on June 26 will coincide with the American Cancer Society's new gray-ribbon campaign that is designed to increase awareness about prostate cancer.
Prostate cancer is second to lung cancer as the leading cause of cancer deaths among American men, with nearly 180,000 new cases diagnosed annually in the United States. About 37,000 Americans are expected to die from the disease this year.
"We don't get the word out to men like we do women because, frankly, women scream for information and men just sit back and don't care until it's too late," said Gange. "This is just a reflection of how men deal with all health problems. They're not pro-active."