June 1, 2017 | Stephen Fine, Founder and President

Skin Cancer Education Re-imagined

The Melanoma Education Foundation (MEF) has been making great strides throughout the United States with its middle and high school-focused skin cancer lessons. Our most recent figures show that they’re used in over 1,700 different schools; spread out over every U.S. state but one. We would very much like to keep that ball rolling. (A link to a list of those schools, as well as to actual teacher testimonials, are both provided below)

If you’re a pre-teen or adolescent health and wellness educator, we encourage you to review and present these highly-informative lessons to your classes. They are designed to be efficient, easy-to-use, and require virtually no prep work. Even better, they fit entirely into a single class period with plenty of time to spare. Both the short student and teacher-training videos have won the prestigious Gold Triangle Award from the American Academy of Dermatology. (AAD)

Now let’s go a little more in-depth into why these lessons are so valuable to both you and your students. Teacher surveys taken after in-class presentations of the MEF lessons reveal that due directly to them, many early melanomas were discovered by students, teachers and family members.

That is crucial, as in its earliest stages melanoma has a cure rate of nearly 100%. The more time that passes between its development and diagnosis, however, allows for the continual increase of the odds that it will become fatal.

The MEF high school lesson is currently the only one that specifically addresses nodular melanoma. Melanoma is the worst form of skin cancer, and nodular is the most lethal type of melanoma. Even worse, teenagers are particularly vulnerable to nodular, which unfortunately doesn’t typically show any of skin cancer’s familiar ABCDE signs. (A= Asymmetry, B= Border, C= Color, D= Diameter, E= Evolving)

MEF also differs from other skin cancer lessons by providing more comprehensive information, which in turn leads to more effective results. Most non-MEF lessons continue to direct their primary focus on sun-safety. They do this despite the plentiful data garnered from numerous studies that show emphasizing sun-safety has little-to-no effect on altering teen behavior patterns. In other words, teens essentially ignore it.

This approach also prevents teenagers from learning the critical fact that 30% of melanomas are not even caused by UV ray exposure. Among other risks, not having that knowledge may cause students who aren’t into tanning to skip regular skin-self exams; thinking they need not bother.

To all the health educators within sight of these words, please consider employing our lessons. The more schools that incorporate their usage, the more young lives we can all save together.

Please check out our teacher testimonials and the list of schools using the MEF skin cancer lessons.