Virginia Leads Nation On Blacks Battling Cancer – HU’s State-Of-The Art Proton Center Plays Vital Role

By Hazel Trice Edney
Special to the Guide
(TriceEdneyWire.com)

Medical eyes are trained on Virginia as Black women from Hampton Roads have become the focus of a new cancer study led by the American Cancer Society (ACS).

The ACS has announced the study, called “Voices of Black Women” to determine why Black women have the greatest cancer risks and worse outcomes than other women. An ACS press release says the new study is the largest study of cancer risk and outcomes in Black women in the United States.

The ACS study on Black women has been announced just as the Virginia General Assembly meets in a special session this week to confirm the Commonwealth’s budget. Advocates against cancer treatment disparities are hoping for the legislature’s attention to the Hampton University Proton Cancer Institute.

In Virginia, the city of Portsmouth has the highest African-American cancer death rates in the state. According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the risk of Black men dying from low-grade prostate cancer nationally is “double that of men of other races” and Black men. The city of Petersburg, Virginia, leads the nation with Black men dying from prostate cancer.  Hampton University, an HBCU, is less than an hour away.

Late last year,  Virginia Attorney General Jason S. Miyares wrote a strong opinion praising the work of the university’s proton center and confirming that insurers in the Commonwealth are prohibited from denying coverage for proton therapy for cancer treatment when the coverage determination “is based on the carrier’s application of a higher standard of clinical evidence to such treatment than is used for treatments it otherwise approves.”

The opinion was welcomed by many who had observed or experienced denials of insurance coverage for the treatment. Some, including Benjamin J. Lambert IV, the son of a former Virginia senator. Lambert died at 52 on June 7, 2019, leaving a wife and two children, after his insurance initially denied the treatment.

It is believed that Miyares’ opinion will now have far-reaching implications for proton therapy and for the future of insurance coverage for advanced medical treatments with budgets that reflect the need for urgent care.

Bill Thomas, associate vice president of governmental relations at Hampton University and a leading national advocate for proton therapy, said, “To help save one life from death or human suffering is worth all the fight in me. For an insurance company not to cover proton radiation therapy when they cover other forms is plain wrong,” Thomas says.

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Hampton University invested more than $225 million in developing the Institute with little to no financial support from the State or local community. It is the hope of advocates that Virginia will now invest in what many perceive as a life-saving modern medical treatment.

Says, Thomas, “I am thankful for the support of the Attorney General to hold the insurance companies accountable to the law.”