To all Maine Prostate Cancer Support Leaders (Affiliated Coalition Support Groups, One2One Team, Advisors, Speakers, Friends and Writers)
From: Nelson Leavitt, President, Maine Coalition to Fight Prostate Cancer
Dear Friends,
I am delighted to share important news with all Prostate Cancer Support leaders in Maine. The Maine Coalition to Fight Prostate Cancer has reached out to the Maine Health Urology Partners to ask them to resume the referral of patients that have been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
With the original MCFPC leadership back in place, we made a firm commitment that our One2One counselors and affiliated Support Groups like yours will continue to offer emotional support to men and their families along with reliable links to obtain current information and, hopefully, the latest science and updates available. We will of course not give medical advice, or allow negative inferences about individual physicians to come into our conversations.
We are happy to report that Maine Health Urology Partners understand and appreciate the important services and resources we provide. They agreed to begin referring their PCa patients to us once again. (Now, with a few days having passed since our approach, they have assigned a delegate urologist to learn more about MCFPC! We are being quickly responsive to maintain open dialogue…)
We intend to continue to reach out to Maine’s broader field of patient navigators, Urology groups, hospitals and Cancer centers to re-establish a good pipeline for the referral of men and their partners from all corners of Maine, and with the pandemic mostly behind us, we will not miss the opportunity to expand our reach and grow the numbers of people we serve..
We are making progress and welcome your suggestions and input. With this thought in mind, we have produced a new, full-color rack card (brochure) that describes who we are, where we are, and how to reach us.
We will be happy to send a supply of these cards to you ASAP for distribution in your area. Please do let me know how many you would like to receive and we will send them to you. (Note to Support group leaders, perhaps members of your group will be willing to distribute some as well).
We will contact you to get details for shipping after you say you will join in. In the meantime, we will mail a sample copy to all whom we have your mailing address on file. To make sure you receive one, please email your mailing address by replying to me now.
We want to cover the state and are trying to keep a general list as to where people have actually placed them. e.g. churches, Rotary, Kiwanis, fire department, town hall, public bulletin boards, care providers, etc..
Also, this is a great time for us to be on the same page about how we plan to go forward and to discuss ideas for growing our numbers
Therefore I will be scheduling a meeting via Zoom, and in person, that will be important for you or your designate to join. Announcement of place, date and time to be announced as soon as details are pulled together. We are hoping for June.
Please reply to this message indicating that you or someone from your Support Group will be willing and able to join this meeting.
We hope that you are excited about this good news because of the positive impact it will have for the benefit of men in Maine. Please make every effort to join in the meeting.
Maine Coalition to Fight Prostate Cancer
Nelson Leavitt, its President
www.mcfpc.org 1 (855) 552-7200 .. x 801