BATON ROUGE — Saturday morning, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center teamed up with Webb's Barbershop and other organizations to provide free colorectal cancer and prostate cancer screenings.

Besides the food, music, and fun, health vendors were at the event providing resources to everyone in attendance.

Attendee Kevin Price said he regularly attends free cancer screening events because he likes to stay on top of his health.

“I’ve always been an advocate to myself to basically try to look out for my health. Even though you know this is Louisiana we got all this good food, but you got to have some kind of control over what you put in your body,” said Price.

According to the American Cancer Society, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men and colorectal is the third leading cause. African American men are at a higher risk of being diagnosed with prostate cancer than any other race. 

Renea Duffin with Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center said screening and early detection is very important to the point where it can save your life.

Allen Vital said he had a health scare before, it is important for him to get regularly screened. He said he hopes this event encourages others to share their health journey.

“Other people may be going through things that they didn’t recognize was a health issue and that conversation may prompt them to do further research,” said Vital.