Harris County Public Health urges men to schedule checkups, screenings

Men in Harris County who have put off a checkup have a clear reason to move now: Harris County Public Health says routine exams and prostate cancer screenings can catch problems when they are still more treatable. The department used June 5 to push that message across a county of about 5 million community members, where work schedules, caregiving and cost can keep men from seeing a doctor until symptoms get harder to ignore.

The release, headlined “Stay in the Game: Prioritize Your Health This Men’s Health Month,” fit into a broader June outreach push from the agency, which also posted gun-violence awareness and heat-safety messages earlier in the week. HCPH says it provides low-cost clinical and preventive health services across Harris County, and its mobile health services include checkups, wellness exams and cancer screenings, including prostate screenings.

For men trying to get care, the county says appointments are currently required at its clinics, though same-day appointments may be available. HCPH also maintains a Monthly Health Observances program and a mobile-health request process for community events, giving neighborhoods, worksites and local organizations another way to bring services closer to residents who may have trouble getting to a clinic.

The screening guidance matters because men are already coming up short on preventive care. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show U.S. life expectancy in 2023 was 75.8 years for males and 81.1 years for females, a gap of 5.3 years. On prostate cancer, the CDC says men ages 55 to 69 should make an individualized screening decision with a doctor, men 70 and older should not be screened routinely, and Black men are at increased risk of getting or dying from the disease.

The American Cancer Society says men at average risk should discuss screening at age 50, while men at higher risk should talk about it at 45. Texas data show how often that conversation gets delayed: a Texas Department of State Health Services fact sheet says only 27.2% of Texas men age 40 and older had a PSA test in the previous two years in 2020. The same fact sheet says Texas had about 103 new prostate cancer cases per 100,000 adult men and about 18 prostate cancer-related deaths per 100,000 adult men during 2015-2019, with non-Hispanic Black Texans facing the highest diagnosis and death rates among race and ethnicity groups.

HCPH says chronic disease remains a major public-health focus, and its latest chronic disease report was released in 2024. For men who have been waiting for a sign to book an appointment, the county’s June message was direct: preventive care is easier to handle before a small problem becomes an emergency.