The CONNECT Collaborator Series is an interview series where we host conversations with healthcare professionals and partners with the goal of encouraging deeper collaboration in the healthcare industry.
Watch the full CONNECT Collaborator Series video featuring our Co-Founder, Lorie Spence and the Executive Director at the Prostate Cancer Foundation Canada, Dr. Abby Collier.
Lorie Spence: Welcome to the CONNECT Collaborator Interview Series, where we host 10-minute conversations with healthcare professionals and partners with the goal of encouraging deeper collaboration in the healthcare industry.
Today’s guest is Dr. Abby Collier, Executive Director at the Prostate Cancer Foundation Canada. Dr. Abby C. Collier joined the Prostate Cancer Foundation Canada (PCFC) from the University of British Columbia, where she was a Professor of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics. She previously has secured multi-million-dollar investments in research grants, equipment and infrastructure, and has been involved in policy advisories to governments in Canada and the USA. Dr. Collier was appointed when PCFC became a national organization. Dr. Collier’s experience and knowledge of academic, industrial and governmental aspects of drug discovery, development, and regulatory affairs underpins her work for PCFC providing awareness, support, education, advocacy, and research in prostate cancer for men, their families, carers and wider communities.
Welcome, Abby and thank you for joining us!
Dr. Abby Collier: Thanks, Lorie, it’s good to see you.
Lorie Spence: Prostate Cancer Foundation Canada has two main pillars: Education and Advocacy. Could you share what makes the foundation’s educational activities for patients, caregivers and healthcare providers unique in terms of pillars?
Dr. Abby Collier: We have several, and you can reduce them to education and advocacy, but as you mentioned in your introduction, I think support and research are important as well, but they also come in under education. I think our support network and our education for people who have prostate cancer as well as early detection is really important. We have 72 support groups across the country. Many of them are local, some of them work hybrid and some of them are completely online. As a national opportunity, we provide speakers that can be medically or scientifically qualified, or work from their own lived experience. And I think those kinds of educational components, including support, really help people on their prostate cancer journey.
Secondly, in terms of advocacy, we’re aware that there’s often a gap between new drugs and approvals and between approvals and funding, and we believe that healthcare is a human right. Although our healthcare system is very stretched, we’re here to make sure that prostate cancer patients are also considered part of the equation.
Lorie Spence: We know prostate cancer differs a little bit from other cancers due to its chronic nature and the way it’s managed. Why is it important for patients and their caregivers and families to understand this unique aspect of the disease?
Dr. Abby Collier: For prostate cancer, specifically, it’s commonly very slow growing, and unlike other cancers, there’s often a watch-and-wait approach, also called active surveillance. That means that you can be diagnosed with a potential problem, but you can keep an eye on it, and it’s not always an acutely urgent thing. So what we want is for people to be aware of this disease and to have good management with good medical advice, as well as good social support.
Lorie Spence: Before you can go into the watch and wait, it’s early detection. And we know it’s vital for all cancers, but particularly prostate cancer. What strategies do you and the foundation recommend for early detection?
Dr. Abby Collier: We know that most men, particularly those over the age of 60, have what we call prosthetic hyperplasia. Their prostate grows anyway. It may not be cancerous, but it’s growing. Keeping an eye on that, and understanding that that’s part of our aging process, but then also understanding when it becomes abnormal. Your healthcare provider, usually the doctors, the GPs, are the people that do that. They may send people for a PSA test (Prostate-specific antigen test), which is a blood test that can be monitored as your prostate gets bigger. As you age, your prostate starts sending these proteins out into the blood. Unfortunately, it’s not funded across all provinces, so that’s part of our advocacy that people should not necessarily have to pay for this testing.
Newer techniques are coming through, including MRI, which is imaging, and certain types of other imaging technologies where you can look and see a picture of the prostate. Those are medical decisions that men make with their families, their caregivers, and their medical providers. We suggest that, particularly as men age, they keep in contact with the general practitioner and consult with them about how to detect these things early.
Lorie Spence: I know you mentioned at the beginning of the recording that Prostate Cancer Foundation Canada currently offers a lot more pillars and unique programs and services. Before we get into those, could you tell us a little bit about a couple of the recent programs: The Reef Knot Kits and your partnership with Hockey Fights Cancer? Then, I will follow up on your efforts around knowledge, translation, and research.
Dr. Abby Collier: Our Reef Knot Kits are fairly unique to us. They contain books written by medical professionals. They contain dietary and exercise guides. We also pop in there an information booklet where you can find your local support group or your national support group online, in person, by email and by telephone. The idea is that these get distributed not just by support groups, but through urologists’ offices, general practitioners’ offices and family care so that there is something there and people can take it away and read it at their leisure. It’s a physical kit. We’ll post it out to individuals if they ask us for it and we send it at no cost. We’re working on making that also online, so that people can access it remotely. But there’s also a preference, some people prefer to have something that they can hold on to.
Secondly, Hockey Fights Cancer was something we were invited to this year for the first time, and we were so grateful to the Vancouver Canucks organization and National Hockey League for asking us to take part. As you can imagine, with hockey, there are a lot of men who participate, and we feel like it’s a great outreach into the community which is meaningful to them. In the past, Hockey Fights Cancer has been primarily focused on breast cancer, and we’re very, very grateful that for us, it was the Canucks to start with, but also expanding across the country to the Flames, the Oilers, the Maple Leafs, all of these teams in partnership with the National Hockey League to really get to our men across Canada.
Lorie Spence: Could you tell us a little bit more about some of the future things that are coming and efforts in knowledge translation and research grants?
Dr. Abby Collier: For over 20 years, Prostate Cancer Foundation British Columbia has supported trainees—graduate students, PhDs and masters and then post-doctoral fellows (extra training that you do after you’ve done a PhD). What we’ve recently done is—as this has become a national concern—we’re inviting people to send in their applications, and then we review them once a year. And for the talented and lucky people, we can hand those out in terms of knowledge translation, a new sort of thing that we tried last year, and we’ve now codified it. We’re doing it to support conferences, and whether these are small workshops or satellite conferences to a larger conference, as long as they’re focused on prostate cancer, we believe that bringing people together, making conversations happen and allowing people to express ideas freely is the best way forward and provides an opportunity to disseminate even for those trainees that we support. From there, they can go and discuss their research with more senior people, but also sometimes the more junior people have the best ideas, and we want to support that.
Lorie Spence: Looking forward, what are some of the things that you’re excited about that Prostate Cancer Foundation Canada that people can expect over the next few months and years?
Dr. Abby Collier: I’m really hopeful, and I think the foundation is making more and more strides to support more and more men. We’ve recently put together clinical and scientific advisory boards to strengthen our own selves. They can help guide us in the newest and best approaches, both research-wise and medical. We’re really keen on keeping our support groups going. We had 69 up until December. We now have 72, which tells us that we’re providing a benefit and that we’re providing support across the country at a grassroots level. Thirdly, we’ve recently put together a speakers list, and this contains medical experts, scientific experts, and lived experiences with people. We want to be able to get those ideas out there in a really safe and informative manner so that people feel supported and knowledgeable.
Lorie Spence: Excellent. Thank you, Abby, for joining us. We wish you the best of luck with all of these activities, and it looks like you’re on quite a great road. Can you tell our audience where people can find more information and contact you?
Dr. Abby Collier: Absolutely. Our website has a huge amount of information on it. It is www.prostatecanada.ca. That is where you can find the outreach details and emails for all of my staff. There are five of us in the office—small but mighty—and we will get back to you as soon as possible—usually within 24 to 48 hours. We take phone calls in the office as well; the numbers are on the website.
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