This coming month the IVN team will be participating in Movember, or Mustache November for the laymen.

The Movember initiative is a month-long event involving growing mustaches in order to raise awareness about men's health issues - especially prostate and testicular cancer.  This initiative was started in 2004 in Australia on the observation that men, contrary to women, are not very inclined to talk about their health issues, and even less so to effectively participate in early detection of cancer. During the whole month of October, NFL teams were wearing pink in support of the fight against breast cancer. Is there any equivalent for prostate cancer? No.

Prostate cancer, however,  is the second cause of cancer death among American men, after lung cancer. In 2012, 241,740 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed and 28,170 men will die in the United States.  It is also one of the cancers with the highest survival rate when detected early, thus awareness is extremely important.

Movember has grown from a humble initiative in Melbourne in 2004 to a global movement with 854,000 participants worldwide in 2011, raising  $126.3 million.

The money is raised through the creation of individual or team profiles on the movember.com website, where donations can be made. The funds raised are then donated to men's health foundation such as the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Livestrong Foundation.

Some members of IVN's team have made the commitment to proudly grow and keep a mustache during the month of November, despite the absence of elegance for some of them, to participate in the effort to raise awareness about this very serious health issue.