In 2018, as part of the Lions Centennial celebrations, each club in the uk was invited to make nominations for awards to recognise up to five individuals who had made an outstanding contribution in their own right. One of these nominations was to be for an engraved glass plaque, the remainder would be for certificates signed by our Patron, the Countess of Wessex.The Ironbridge club decided to use this opportunity to recognise 3 people who had made a significant contribution to the success of our flagship prostate screening programme – Past President Mavis Derham, Julie Rich and Jackie Taylor. These awards have been made over the past few weeks and details of the background to each is shown below.
Mavis Derham
When Mavis became our President in July 2015 she took the leadership of a relatively small club which was fairly heavily stretched to maintain its annual programme. We were not well-equipped to take on a major project like prostate screening for which we lacked both the expertise and finance and the easy option might have been to adopt a lest ambitious approach designed to maintain our existing programme. But Mavis felt passionately that our local community deserved to have a prostate screening event and she showed real leadership not only by convincing fellow Lions that we could do it but also by taking the lead of the project itself and by opening discussions with our friends in Ironbridge Rotary for a partnership relationship which has now been the basis for three very successful screening events delivering over 1750 prostate tests.The success of the screening sessions in 2017, 2018 and 2019 was the result of the efforts of a significant number of people within the club, in Rotary and in the wider community. But without the vision and leadership shown by Mavis in her Presidential year these sessions might not have happened at all.
Julie Rich
When we began the planning for a prostate screening programme in 2016 we were starting from scratch. We had little idea about what was involved or what we needed to do to run a successful PSA programme. However, we had the enormous good fortune to be put in touch with Julie Rich who had experience of working with retired consultant urological surgeon David Baxter-Smith to run public PSA testing sessions with other organisations. Having lost her father to prostate cancer, Julie was, and is, passionate about the need to offer testing to men over 50 and completely dedicated to supporting those who who wish to provide that testing.
Our success over the past 3 years has been due in large part to Julie. She has been with us as guide, mentor and enthusiastic supporter at every step from our first meeting through to the recent third PSA event, involved in planning meetings, in promotional activities and in delivering the testing itself. Crucially she has been responsible for recruiting the phlebotomists required to take the blood tests. 13 phlebotomists were involved in our most recent session and they all came to us for the evening having worked a day in local NHS hospitals.we had no hesitation in deciding that our Centennial plaque should go to Julie and we were delighted that our recent Charter lunch provided an opportunity for a surprise presentation by David Baxter-Smith.
Jackie Taylor
When Harold Taylor arrived at our prostate screening session in March 2017 he decided that the queue was too long and rang his wife to say that he was coming home. Fortunately Jackie told him to stay put – as a direct result of the testing Harold discovered that he was suffering from an aggressive form of prostate cancer which was just still just treatable.At that point, Jackie might have been quietly thankful; thankful she was but quiet she most certainly wasn’t.
Jackie decided, with her husband’s support, that they would bang the drum as loudly as possible for the Lions and for the need for a national prostate testing programme. Over the following 12 months, while Harold was undergoing his treatment Jackie wrote to the anybody she felt could influence policy – including her MP, the Health Minister and the Prime Minister. And when they wrote back with the party line – essentially 
that the test is not sufficiently accurate to justify its use – she told them they were wrong and she had a husband to prove it.
The sad death of her brother from prostate cancer while Harold was under treatment served merely to reinforce Jackie’s resolve to fight for a national testing system as also did the more recent news that prostate cancer deaths had overtaken those from breast cancer. Over the past two years Jackie never missed an opportunity to promote the Lions testing programme and at the recent testing event it was a great pleasure to be able to show our appreciation by presenting her with a centennial certificate.
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