He also completed a research fellowship in erectile dysfunction and a clinical fellowship in neuro-urology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Weiler Hospital. During his training, he was bothered by the significant racial disparities in prostate cancer incidence and survivability in patients of color in New York City. He received a grant to fund a free prostate cancer screening program for men of African descent in New York City. He created a partnership with the Baptist Ministers Association of NY and the Prince Hall Masons and screened over 5000 men of color.

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His experience with prostate cancer highlighted the complexities of racial disparities in healthcare and why diversity in clinical research is so important. Many of us in the urological community were convinced that improving access to PSA testing and early detection would correct the racial disparities we saw with prostate cancer in African American men. Further studies confirmed that even when one controls for prostate cancer early detection, socioeconomic status, equal access to care, and level of insurance, the outcomes data remains poor for men of African descent diagnosed with prostate cancer. The lack of large data sets of African American men in prostate cancer trials makes the applicability of diagnostic and treatment algorithms to unrepresentative groups of patients difficult. This is especially true with many of the prostate cancer treatment nomograms.

 

He was recruited to the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he joined the urology academic faculty from July 1994 until December 2009.  During his illustrious academic appointment, he served in many capacities at various New York City Hospitals, including being a member of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center's kidney transplant team and the Harlem Hospital Center's trauma team. He was the director of Ambulatory Urology at Harlem Hospital, the Chief of Urology at North General Hospital, the chief of urologic oncology at the Ralph Lauren Cancer Center, and the Associate Director of neuro-urology at Maimonides Medical Center (Brooklyn). 

 

His experiences at Harlem Hospital Center working in a vastly underserved community highlighted the negative impacts of health disparities and social determinants of health. Dr. Harold Freeman was the chairman of the Department of Surgery at Harlem Hospital and was keenly focused on racial disparities in breast cancer in the Harlem community.  These experiences led Dr. Stone to create the Black Health Network (in partnership with Dr. Ed Ikeguchi and Glenn DeVries) in 1996, the first health information website for African Americans at that time. The initial plan was to create a platform focused on providing culturally sensitive health information. The Black Health Network quickly morphed into a “clinical trial management” company. Amgen had developed a new LHRH antagonist and was keenly interested in recruiting significant African American patients into its clinical trials. The African American urologists of the R. Frank Jones Urological Society (NMA) were recruited by Dr. Stone to participate as principal investigators (many of whom were clinical trial naïve). This was a high-risk proposition for the CEO of Amgen and his scientific team, using so many research naive sites for pivotal studies. The Black Health Network, in partnership with Medidata Solutions, would successfully navigate 25 clinical trial naïve African American urologist investigator sites. These sites became the highest recruiters of African American prostate cancer patients for the Amgen Abarelix trial.

 

Dr. Stone is the founder of Jasper Urology Associates, which has been the leading provider of urologic care in that region of the state of Alabama for over ten years. He created the robotic surgery program at the Walker Baptist Medical Center in 2010. He serves as president of Northwest Alabama Lithotripsy LLC and Alabama Sexual Medicine Specialists LLC. He has served on the scientific advisory boards for Boehringer-Ingelheim, Pfizer, Bayer, Mentor-Coloplast, and American Medical Systems. He served on the International Prostate Committee with the United Nations (UNESCO) at the Paris meeting in 2000. He has served on the scholarship committee of the Congressional Black Caucus. He is an active member of the R. Frank Jones Urological Society. He has previously served as the organization's national president, which is an affiliate of the National Medical Association. He has worked tirelessly to educate men of African descent about prostate cancer and early detection and to address the racial disparities in clinical trial participation.