00;00;00;18 - 00;00;07;14 Dr. Winn I'm Dr. Rob Winn and you're listening to Real Cancer Talk from VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. 00;00;07;16 - 00;00;35;00 Clovia Lawrence I am Miss Community Clovia welcoming you to Community Conversations, the black health wins. And we talk about cancer research, engagement and cures from A to Z. We've lost Grammy Award winner Richmond's own D'Angelo at the age of 51. He died from pancreatic cancer and I want us to delve in, to go to the source about it, not what the words are in the community. 00;00;35;02 - 00;00;57;14 Clovia Lawrence Professor Kim Rhoads is a board certified general and colorectal surgeon with additional training and basic cancer research, epidemiology, health service research, health policy, and community based participatory research. Professor Kimberly Rhoads of the VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, thank you so much for joining us this weekend. 00;00;57;18 - 00;01;03;06 Dr. Kim Rhoads Thank you for having me and for putting attention on this, horrible, horrible occurrence and disease. 00;01;03;09 - 00;01;31;22 Clovia Lawrence Yes. And when we think about D'Angelo and as we're streaming all over the world, and of course, in Richmond, folks are talking about this lifestyle, they're talking about how he delivered music from the soul. But rarely do we talk about the healthy aspect. So we I want us to talk about pancreatic cancer. What is it and what is the survival rate. 00;01;31;29 - 00;01;36;26 Clovia Lawrence And can we connect this to clinical trials Doctor Rhoads? 00;01;36;28 - 00;01;55;06 Dr. Kim Rhoads Sometimes we can. So let me start with the first question. So what is pancreatic cancer? Cancer in general is a dysfunction of of the cells in our body. When they sort of don't get the message, they didn't get the memo that they need to stop growing right. There's a normal control over how many cells we have. 00;01;55;10 - 00;02;14;11 Dr. Kim Rhoads With cancer, what happens is the cells lose their ability to listen to the stop sign signals that says, do not grow any further. And instead they keep multiplying and they turn into a ball of cells. And that's a tumor. The pancreas does a couple of things. One, it makes the juices that help us digest our food. And the other thing is it makes insulin. 00;02;14;15 - 00;02;35;07 Dr. Kim Rhoads So those are two different kinds of cells that live in the pancreas. The type of cancer that that I believe D'Angelo had was the type that comes from the cells that help us make the juices to digest our food. The reason I bring this up is because the survival rates are actually a little bit better if you have a tumor related to the cells that make insulin. 00;02;35;09 - 00;03;05;00 Dr. Kim Rhoads So the more common pancreatic cancer that we see is the one that comes from the we call them epithelial cells that make the digestive juices. And it's often quite deadly. The survival rates are relatively low, and that's largely because it is usually detected when it's pretty advanced, because you're not going to have a lot of symptoms necessarily when you have a small tumor. It's not going to block, the flow of those of those juices, which would, you know, cause pain. 00;03;05;00 - 00;03;28;08 Dr. Kim Rhoads So then you might know instead it's kind of out, you know, far away from where it's going to cause any kind of discomfort. So people often don't know that they have pancreatic cancer, until it's pretty far advanced. And that's why the survival rates are relatively low. People tend to present at stage three or stage four because they're starting to get symptoms. 00;03;28;11 - 00;03;31;00 Dr. Kim Rhoads That's telling you that the tumor is already advanced. 00;03;31;02 - 00;03;34;00 Clovia Lawrence What are some of the symptoms, Doctor Rhoads? 00;03;34;02 - 00;04;02;16 Dr. Kim Rhoads So some of the symptoms can be abdominal pain, nausea, stools that, that, you know, when the bowel movement doesn't quite look exactly right in terms of, of the consistency, the color may change. So what you're looking for in that is really light colored stools. And when I say light, I mean like white super light yellow. The urine will turn a different color. 00;04;02;16 - 00;04;30;28 Dr. Kim Rhoads At later stages. It will get dark. It will look like tea. People can get what's called jaundice, where the white part of the eye looks yellow. Or golden. So, people can have nausea, vomiting, things like that. But by the time you're. And then weight loss, of course. And by the time you're, getting to that point, the cancer's probably pretty advanced. 00;04;31;00 - 00;04;39;23 Dr. Kim Rhoads And unfortunately, as I said, with cancers, that's often when people present for care because they're just really not feeling well. 00;04;39;25 - 00;04;51;04 Clovia Lawrence So what can we do when we get our yearly physicals? Can we check for that? Or what type of testing we could do to ensure that our pancreas is intact? 00;04;51;06 - 00;05;04;26 Dr. Kim Rhoads Yes. So that's the other part that's challenging about pancreas cancer. We don't have a screening test for pancreas cancer. So we don't have a way. We also don't have a way to prevent pancreas cancer. 00;05;04;28 - 00;05;50;25 Dr. Kim Rhoads Obviously there are some risks that people can avoid or lower, by changing their, their habits or avoiding certain things like drinking alcohol in excess, smoking cigarettes, reduces the risk of so many different cancers. But there are no it's not really about diet or being obese or any of those things. It's unfortunately one of those types of cancers that's just a bit of, unlucky. Because we just don't have the enough of an understanding of how it starts or how the cells become, as I said, like lose their ability to stop growing. 00;05;50;27 - 00;06;01;13 Dr. Kim Rhoads And so we can't give direct guidance except for the typical things that we talk about in terms of reducing cancer risk overall. 00;06;01;16 - 00;06;02;23 Clovia Lawrence Understood. 00;06;02;25 - 00;06;43;14 Dr. Kim Rhoads Well, I think the thing to emphasize here is actually that that, number one, if you do have any kind of symptoms, we need to get it checked out. And and I know that it's not fun going to the doctor. It's not necessarily comfortable, a comfortable space. We're hoping to change that at Massey. We want people to feel like they're coming to a place where they're not going to be judged for any decisions that they've made in their lives or how they've lived their lives, but welcomed in and, have the whatever the issue is, you know, attacked with, academic rigor just, just a pure desire to really understand what's going on and what 00;06;43;14 - 00;07;16;22 Dr. Kim Rhoads needs to be done. And the reason I'm really emphasizing Massey here is because what we need to talk about with pancreas cancer, if you were diagnosed or some loved one is diagnosed, where are you going to get care? Because that's what matters to survival at that point. The operations for pancreas cancer are very complicated. They do have a lot of side effects at the end because you're removing important parts of the intestine along with the pancreas. 00;07;16;24 - 00;07;45;22 Dr. Kim Rhoads So you want to be in a care setting where you have trained experts not only to do the operations, but then the expertise after the operation to, ensure that you get the right if you need chemotherapy or any other additional medications, that that you have the right team working on that and that you have the right nursing staff on the other side of the operation to watch out for complications and make sure you get through that smoothly. 00;07;45;25 - 00;08;07;13 Dr. Kim Rhoads So our best chance for, a good survival is detecting it early, which, again, is difficult. No. No blame or shame for anybody there. But then if you get diagnosed, you need to get to the best possible place for treatment. And that is typically going to be a comprehensive cancer center like Massey. 00;08;07;16 - 00;08;27;19 Clovia Lawrence Yeah. Absolutely. VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. And I know with Doctor Winn over there and also with you Doctor Rhoads as you doing your community engagement and and your outreach that you're doing that even though we don't have a cure for pancreatic cancer, you can't really detect it, the science is still out. 00;08;27;25 - 00;08;39;05 Dr. Kim Rhoads Well, the science is still out because we're always trying to innovate and advance what we can do to keep people alive and healthy. But what I would say is pancreatic cancer is terrible. 00;08;39;07 - 00;08;39;27 Clovia Lawrence Oh, it is? 00;08;40;01 - 00;09;05;25 Clovia Lawrence Absolutely, if it’s found in early stages, a combination of surgery and possibly chemotherapy can be curative. The problem is by the time it is found, it is usually too far advanced to be cured. It may be treated and managed, but when it is very advanced, the survival rate which we measure it at in five year increments is quite low. 00;09;05;28 - 00;09;40;17 Dr. Kim Rhoads Yeah. So I just wanted to add that, I think it's important for people to recognize that pancreas cancer is the fifth most common cancer in black and African-American people in the United States. And, I raise that because by comparison, it is the 10th most common cancer in the general population. So I do think we have an opportunity to ask some questions about why that might be, why it's more common in black people, since it is such a critical and often deadly cancer. 00;09;40;24 - 00;09;42;27 Dr. Kim Rhoads We need to solve this problem. 00;09;43;00 - 00;09;53;16 Clovia Lawrence Right? That's what VCU, VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center is here for. Doctor Kim Rhodes, thank you so much for this health update. 00;09;53;18 - 00;09;55;04 Dr. Kim Rhoads Thank you for having. 00;09;55;07 - 00;10;19;22 Clovia Lawrence Welcome back to Community Conversations. I am Miss Community Clovia and it’s the Black Health Wins podcast. And my very special guest, she is brand spanking new doctor Kim Rhoads, Associate Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. So for folks who are just joining us, they're like, wait a minute, community engagement. I thought Massey was a cancer treatment hospital only. 00;10;19;29 - 00;10;22;14 Clovia Lawrence So, Doctor Rhoads, what do you say to that? 00;10;22;17 - 00;10;45;21 Dr. Kim Rhoads Yeah. So, Massey is what is called a National Cancer Institute, Comprehensive Cancer Center, and that is a very special designation. There's only about 70 fewer than 80 of these comprehensive cancer centers across the country. So it's a very special and very difficult to get designation and recognition. And what it he acknowledges is that the cancer center has research. 00;10;45;21 - 00;11;17;21 Dr. Kim Rhoads It has cancer care, of course, and in most cases, and collaboration across research and care. But it also requires that there is a community outreach and engagement component. And that component, you know, some people will say, poo poo community. That's not hard science. But the reality is that the performance on community engagement drives how well the cancer center is scored in the eyes of the National Cancer Institute. 00;11;17;23 - 00;11;58;27 Dr. Kim Rhoads So this has become, over the last ten years, a major priority of the National Cancer Institute. And it's played out by the cancer centers themselves. So you have to have a person who leads community outreach and engagement. You typically have to have some kind of advisory board or a network of community partners and patient advocates. They need to be embedded across the system and I'm so committed to this part, across the research, across all of the activities, so that what gets produced from the research and the care delivery in that comprehensive cancer center has real impact on the people who live in the area that is served by that cancer center. 00;11;59;01 - 00;12;29;06 Dr. Kim Rhoads And that's how you're judged, actually, to continue to have this special status. So I'm really privileged because this job did not exist, when I was in medical school, I had no idea that there might be a job where what I would get to do is engage people in, in steering the agenda at their cancer center. Or that my job would be to look at things and ask the question, is that equitable? 00;12;29;09 - 00;12;56;03 Dr. Kim Rhoads Are we doing that right? Is that right for the community? Does that serve the people that we're claiming, to be trying to impact in terms of cancer outcomes? So I feel super privileged because this is a place where I'm passionate and committed, and then it's sort of like the universe created a job, where I get to really drive that issue home not just for myself, not just for the community, but within the cancer center. 00;12;56;03 - 00;13;10;03 Dr. Kim Rhoads So the cancer center members, the researchers, the staff, the faculty, there has to be some attention at every level to how what we're doing, has impact on the communities that we serve. 00;13;10;05 - 00;13;29;24 Clovia Lawrence Well, you just sold me on it. And when I think about the science and the research and everything isn't for everybody, and we all know that with the medicines that are being produced and the medicines that are going to be researched over and over and over again, when it comes to clinical trials, it's not a one size fits all. 00;13;29;27 - 00;13;59;24 Clovia Lawrence For a number of years, and I know you can attest to this, medical science was not inclusive of black, brown and tan people. It was that size and it didn't work for us. And so the mere fact that you are the community engagement and outreach, community outreach and engagement, as you do that, you're going to find out when you go into homes, when you invite people to conferences, when you do surveys, that everybody's pain is not the same. 00;13;59;27 - 00;14;21;08 Clovia Lawrence One person can take a level of pain. One person was diagnosed with cancer and they are doing better, and one person is not doing as best as they should. But again, for folks who are listening to us, we have got to take the step up when it comes to our health and we can't leave our health to anyone else anymore. 00;14;21;11 - 00;14;42;00 Dr. Kim Rhoads That's right, I say. We are the ones we well, Barack Obama, president, former President Barack Obama said, we are the ones we've been waiting for. I say it all the time. No one is. No one's coming for us. It is, you know, the efforts to get to the equity and justice that we need is going to be for us and by us. 00;14;42;02 - 00;15;09;00 Dr. Kim Rhoads And if it is as we, call it boo boo, if it is for us and by us, it's going to be more sustainable, longer lasting, more enduring, crossing over generations. So it's not that generational change is not going to come from the health care system. Giving something to us that has never been the case for, for black and brown people in this country. 00;15;09;02 - 00;15;29;26 Clovia Lawrence And as we working hard, especially with the Black Health Wins podcast, these are just some things that we never who used to sit around like you said, and all your ten years of, of being in the medical field or your residency or your internships, it was never a community engagement department. What do you mean, community engagement? I'm a scientist. 00;15;29;26 - 00;15;37;28 Clovia Lawrence I'm a researcher. I know everything about everybody's body. But then you find out all bodies are not made equal. 00;15;38;01 - 00;16;02;07 Dr. Kim Rhoads What it and what it really requires in order to see that is, is humility. The understanding and recognition that everybody with a cancer diagnosis goes into a vulnerable phase or a vulnerable state where, like, my body is kind of betraying me. Right? You may have done all the things that we say to do to prevent cancer, and I just want to just lift the burden off of people. 00;16;02;07 - 00;16;25;23 Dr. Kim Rhoads There are some cancers that cannot be prevented and we don't know why they happen. And then there are those that can be prevented or risk can be reduced. But if you do all the right things, you still could end up with a diagnosis of cancer. And I think it's really important as providers and as people who work inside of the health care system to just approach everybody with some humility. 00;16;25;23 - 00;16;34;19 Dr. Kim Rhoads As my aunt sort of alluded to, she want to walk in and be judged. If I'm going to walk in and be judged, I don't really want to be in your space. 00;16;34;21 - 00;16;55;03 Clovia Lawrence Or you didn't make me feel I wasn't inviting. Yeah, you wasn't invited. And and and Doctor Rhoads, I was a person, you know, I have to get my physicals every year. That's just what I have to do for the rest of my life. You got to get your blood work done and all of those things. Right. But I had a doctor at one time, a general practitioner, years ago. 00;16;55;05 - 00;17;34;15 Clovia Lawrence Whenever I walked in and I talked to the general practitioner, we go in, you know, they do the little consultation before, it was always rushed. I didn't feel like I could share anything with you. But then when I was like, I gotta go. So when I get my new general practitioner and that's something that I want to stress to all of the folks that are listening, male or female parents and guardians of your students who are turning 18 or seeing the pediatrician, you have to develop a relationship with your doctor because when you develop a relationship with your doctor, if something doesn't feel right or there's been a shift in your blood work, you have 00;17;34;15 - 00;17;40;06 Clovia Lawrence a relationship where they can come back and say, what are you doing? You stressing? What's going on? 00;17;40;09 - 00;18;05;10 Dr. Kim Rhoads Well, but I will, I will say in this. So I'm straddling, you know, both sides of the fence because as a clinician, you know, I remember, first of all, getting in trouble because I spent too much time with patients. Right. Okay. That meant that my clinic rooms, which were supposed to be turned over to another doctor in the afternoon, that doctor was going to be late and people get mad because you're late. 00;18;05;12 - 00;18;25;25 Dr. Kim Rhoads So you can't have it both ways unless we shift the system. So building that relationship is a big part of you know, I think some people think of community outreach and engagement as, oh, we're going to do outreach. And, you know, maybe we can talk about that a little bit. Personally, I don't like that word because I don't think it anticipates that anybody will reach back. 00;18;25;25 - 00;18;57;22 Dr. Kim Rhoads So I like to reach out instead of doing outreach, because that means that somebody is going to reach back out. That also means I'm going to learn something. But that said, the goal of doing this work is to establish a, a relationship with community partners and patient advocates so that when they need something, whether it's cancer or something else we offer at VCU, we can connect them to that, that relationship becomes, more sustained. 00;18;57;24 - 00;19;18;13 Dr. Kim Rhoads A clinician who sees you for a particular problem, in the old days, yes. Was establishing a relationship sometimes was coming to your house. But that's not the system we work in now. We work in a system where you got a clinic grid that has 15 minutes per patient. If you've seen them before, 30 minutes if you've never met him before, that's not not enough time. 00;19;18;15 - 00;19;43;21 Dr. Kim Rhoads And then you're not going to see him again for a month or six weeks is a hard way to establish a relationship. And what the benefit of this structure that has been created by the NCI is now you've got a core of people who can start to establish that relationship and be the hand to hold, or the hand to reach to when you have a problem or a question about your health. 00;19;43;23 - 00;20;07;04 Dr. Kim Rhoads I'm not I'm not convinced because health care really is a business. I'm not convinced that they're going to be, a model where you build in enough time for your doctor to establish a relationship with you. So that's one of the benefits of being able to build out a robust team, to do community engagement work and to reach out. 00;20;07;09 - 00;20;21;12 Clovia Lawrence This is amazing. We like you staying close. If you're just joining us, Doctor Kim Rhoads is Associate Director of Community Outreach and Engagement with VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. We have more good news. Stay close. 00;20;21;14 - 00;20;46;27 Clovia Lawrence Welcome back to Community Conversations, the Black Health Wins podcast. I am Clovia Lawrence and my special guest is Doctor Kim Rhoads as Associate Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. Doctor Rhoads, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for being here. I can hear your passion through the radio when you talk about fighting for justice for black and brown people. 00;20;47;00 - 00;21;00;24 Clovia Lawrence One team, one fight, and you chose to engage the community to find out really what's going on after your aunt’s diagnosis, and this is where we are today. 00;21;00;27 - 00;21;34;12 Dr. Kim Rhoads Yeah. And it's hard to believe because it is full circle. I was born in Portsmouth, Virginia. My, Yeah, yeah, my father was in the, in the Navy. So I was born in Portsmouth, but then we got moved to California, which is where I grew up. And I feel like I gathered a lot of experiences here in California, leading, founding community outreach and engagement for the Stanford Cancer Institute and then serving as the associate director for, community outreach engagement at the University of California, San Francisco. 00;21;34;15 - 00;22;02;07 Dr. Kim Rhoads Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. So I'm bringing all of that wealth of experience back to the place where I was born and where my passion for doing community engagement work was stimulated, as you mentioned, by my experience in Norfolk. So, it's full circle for me, and I'm really excited to see what we can achieve in this. 00;22;02;09 - 00;22;26;06 Dr. Kim Rhoads In the catchment area for Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. I'm looking forward to bringing some of my tricks, that I learned over this 30 years, because I really think that, it's such an honor to be able to impact the place where most of my cousins still live. And where my story really starts. 00;22;26;09 - 00;22;52;02 Clovia Lawrence And thank you so much for taking heed to that and asking questions and wanting to know about this after 30 years. And you were a colorectal surgeon and you said, okay, it's good. I love what I do. I love health, but I have to be more engaged with the community. And for this, we thank you. And I know it's going to be really such a blessing to have you over VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. 00;22;52;07 - 00;23;20;09 Clovia Lawrence I know Doctor Winn said I'm continuously in a win win situation, I know that. That's right. It's true. I can, like, hear his voice. It was like, Clo, do you know about Doctor Kim Rhoads? And I could just see him talking about this and all of the work that you're doing. And we want to build stronger and stronger relationships with community partners and organizers of people who are like minded, like the VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. 00;23;20;12 - 00;23;27;11 Clovia Lawrence So if our listeners locally and globally would like to get in touch with you, how can they contact you? 00;23;27;13 - 00;24;00;15 Dr. Kim Rhoads Yeah. So please, visit our website at www.MasseyCancercenter.org. And through that website you can find the community engagement or community outreach and engagement page of the website. But if you want to email us directly, you don't want to use the email address: EngageMassey@vcu.edu all one word. EngageMassey@vcu.edu . 00;24;00;17 - 00;24;14;02 Dr. Kim Rhoads Really excited to meet new community partners in the area, so I hope that folks will reach out to us so that we can explore what we can do together to help move us all to health, equity and justice. 00;24;14;04 - 00;24;24;14 Clovia Lawrence Well, you heard it from the Associate Director of Community Outreach and Engagement at VCU, Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center. Doctor Kim Rhoads, thank you so much for this wealth of information. 00;24;24;17 - 00;24;25;21 Dr. Kim Rhoads Thank you for having me. 00;24;25;27 - 00;24;34;00 Clovia Lawrence This has been Community Conversations The Black Health Wins podcast. I am Miss Community Clovia. Thanks for listening. 00;24;34;03 - 00;24;46;12 Speaker 3 Whether it's collecting toys for families in need. Or sending kids to camp for the summer. Raising funds for breast cancer. Or keeping us up to date with everything from your. Then you must be talking about community flow. 00;24;46;13 - 00;24;49;06 Clovia Lawrence I love that you know she's there for me when I need her to be.