Movember and Men's Health: Cancer Screening Worth Talking About

Two very different cancers, one campaign

Movember asks men to grow a mustache in November and raise money for men's health. Its own site groups its work into prostate cancer, testicular cancer, and mental health with suicide prevention.

Putting prostate and testicular cancer under one banner is good fundraising and slightly confusing medicine. They affect different age groups, they are found in different ways, and the advice for each is close to opposite.

Here is the difference, laid out.

Prostate cancer: common, and mostly slow

The prostate is a gland below the bladder, wrapped around the tube that carries urine out.

The American Cancer Society projects about 333,830 new prostate cancer diagnoses in the United States in 2026 and about 36,320 deaths, the figures SEER carries on its prostate page. It accounts for 15.8 percent of all new cancer cases, more than any other single cancer.

Those two figures tell you the essential thing. It is very common, and most men who have it die of something else.

SEER also records a stark difference by group. The rate of new cases is 200.1 per 100,000 men per year among non-Hispanic Black men, against 123.2 across all groups and 122.2 among non-Hispanic white men. Family history raises risk too.

Why prostate screening is a decision, not a rule

NCI states it directly: there is no standard or routine screening test for prostate cancer.

The PSA test measures prostate-specific antigen, a substance made mostly by the prostate, in the blood. A raised level can mean cancer. It can equally mean infection, inflammation, or benign prostatic hyperplasia — an enlarged but non-cancerous prostate.

The real problem NCI names is overdiagnosis. Some prostate cancers would never have caused symptoms or shortened a life, but once a test finds them, they tend to get treated. NCI states it is not known whether treating those cancers helps a man live longer.

And treatment costs something. NCI lists erectile dysfunction and urinary incontinence as the most common long-term side effects of radical prostatectomy and radiation therapy. It also notes that men newly diagnosed with prostate cancer showed a higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease or suicide, greatest in the first weeks or months after diagnosis.

Movember's own material makes the same point from the other side, noting that erectile dysfunction after treatment affects relationships, and describing prostate cancer as a couple's disease rather than only a man's.

None of that argues against testing. It argues against testing without a conversation first. Our page on prostate cancer screening sets out the trade-offs.

Testicular cancer: rare, young, and highly curable

This one runs the other way entirely.

NCI describes testicular cancer as most often beginning in germ cells, the cells that make sperm. It is rare, and most frequently diagnosed in men aged 20 to 34. NCI states that most testicular cancers can be cured, even when diagnosed at an advanced stage.

The American Cancer Society projects about 9,810 new cases in the United States in 2026 and about 630 deaths. NCI's own SEER measurement puts five-year relative survival at 94.6 percent among men diagnosed between 2016 and 2022.

There is no routine screening test, and NCI says so. With a cancer this uncommon, a screening program would produce far more false alarms than cancers found.

So detection depends entirely on someone noticing a change and acting on it.

What to check, and what to report

For testicular cancer, NCI lists the signs. Any of them, in any man, warrants an appointment rather than a wait-and-see:

• A painless lump or swelling in either testicle.
• A change in how a testicle feels.
• A dull ache in the lower abdomen or the groin.
• A sudden build-up of fluid in the scrotum.
• Pain or discomfort in a testicle or the scrotum.

Most of these turn out to be something benign. The point of getting them checked is not that cancer is likely, but that the cure rate is very high and depends on not sitting on it for six months.

For prostate cancer, the trigger is different. NCI notes most cases are found by testing rather than symptoms, and that urinary changes usually point to benign enlargement rather than cancer. What to do in November is book the conversation about whether a PSA test makes sense for you — given your age, your family history, and whether you are a non-Hispanic Black man.

Our page on testicular cancer and our screening overview go further into both.

What this does not mean

• An awareness month is a prompt, not evidence. Nothing about November changes what a test can do.
• A high PSA is not a diagnosis, and a normal PSA does not rule prostate cancer out. Only a biopsy settles it.
• Choosing not to have a PSA test is a defensible decision made knowingly. It is a poor one made by accident.
• A testicular lump is usually not cancer. It still needs examining.
• SEER's headline figures — 98.2 percent five-year relative survival for prostate cancer, 94.6 percent for testicular — are group averages drawn from people diagnosed between 2016 and 2022. For prostate cancer that has reached distant sites, the same 2016–2022 measurement records 40.1 percent. None of these describes an individual.
• Movember also funds mental health work, and the reason is not decorative. Distress after a cancer diagnosis is common and treatable.

Sources

• Movember: Men's Health and Prostate Cancer
• NCI PDQ: Prostate Cancer Screening (Patient Version)
• NCI: Symptoms of Testicular Cancer
• NCI: Testicular Cancer—Patient Version
• NCI SEER Cancer Stat Facts: Prostate Cancer
• NCI SEER Cancer Stat Facts: Testicular Cancer

How this article was prepared

An AI-assisted editorial system helped prepare this page. No named medical reviewer has reviewed it unless one is listed.

Cancer Explained is published by the National Cancer Information Foundation. It is not medical advice and does not suggest a test or treatment.

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