Welcome to the September prostate cancer focus issue of AUANews. September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, and the Guest Editors of this special edition, Dr. Mary E. Westerman and Dr. Kristen Scarpato, collaborated to invite the leading urologists in the field to present their cutting-edge research and findings to our community. I am extremely grateful to Dr. Scarpato and Dr. Westerman for their leadership in urology and for compiling this amazing collection of articles. It is because of their hard work and dedication that we have this focus issue as a resource to be used globally in the treatment of our patients.

This issue showcases advances in prostate cancer treatment and more. Our Guest Editors also served as authors in this issue. “Focal Therapy: For Which Patients? What’s Currently Available and What May Be Coming Soon?” (p. 13) is co-authored by Olutiwa Akinsola, MD and Kristen R. Scarpato, MD and studies the evolving treatment landscape for prostate cancer. Mary E. Westerman, MD examines “Radical Prostatectomy and Tissue Preservation: What Have We Learned from the Retzius-Sparing Technique?” (p. 7) Alexander P. Cole, MD and Mayra I. Lucas, BS, MPH study “Leveraging Health Policy to Address Disparities in Prostate Cancer: From the Staff Meeting to the State House.” (p. 10) This ambitious article projects that “…racial and ethnic minority individuals will make up over half the United States population by 2045, yet racial and ethnic health disparities in cancer diagnosis and treatment persist.” Other articles include PET imaging for advanced prostate cancer, important considerations for PSA screening in Black men, and germline testing in prostate cancer. These highlights offer only a small glimpse into the high-quality content offered in the pages of this month’s AUANews, and I thank each of our authors for their outstanding contributions to the advancement and improvement of prostate cancer health outcomes.

What else can you look forward to in 2022 and the years to come? I am thrilled to share that beginning this month, we will launch an additional issue, AUANewsExtra. This additional issue will be released in the middle of each month as an online-only release to approximately 25,000 readers around the world. Since I began my term as Editor of AUANews, I have tripled the amount of content we are publishing each month, and there are no signs that this growth will slow. Rather than stifling publication opportunities, we will further extend our reach by doubling the number of issues in a calendar year from 12 to 24. I invite feedback from each one of you and welcome ideas for future content you would like to see featured in AUANews. With the growth of AUANews, we have been mindful to expand our global authorship and diversity of voices and subject matter. We will continue to prioritize this important development of content.

As the Secretary of the AUA, I am proud of my work in the worldwide urological community. The AUANews brand allows us to disseminate clinical and membership news in a way that connects us all in our shared mission to improve the lives of our patients. I look forward to the continued growth of the AUANews ecosystem and encourage all of you to turn to AUANews to share your important research and to learn about trends and improvements in our field.