All Skin Cancer Lessons are not Created Equal

I founded the nonprofit Melanoma Education Foundation (MEF) in 1999, one year after my 26-year old son Daniel tragically passed away from the disease. From day one we studied the most beneficial ways to get teens to absorb critical information about melanoma. To that end, we created melanoma lessons for high school and middle school teachers to present to their students.

The attention span of teens has never been shorter, and few have the patience to listen intently to a long-winded monologue on a disease. We learned it is vital to speak to them in their own language, and make the lessons brief and easily digestible. Our free award-winning lessons were created based on data gathered from teen student focus groups. Our lesson videos feature teens talking about their firsthand experiences directly to other teens. At last count the lessons were being taught in over 1,700 schools in all 50 U.S states.

We’ve received hundreds of accounts and positive responses of melanoma being stopped dead in its tracks due to the lessons, not only in students but also within their families. Some health educators have even saved their own lives by virtue of having information on melanoma about which they were previously unaware. There are several reasons why the lessons are so successful.

• Extensive research has revealed that sun safety-based skin cancer lessons are unsuccessful in getting teens to change their behaviors toward UV exposure.
• Other teen skin cancer and video textbook lessons provide inadequate information on melanoma in general and none on nodular melanoma, the most lethal type that disproportionately strikes teens, pre-teens and adolescents.
• Most skin cancer lessons overstate the importance SPF, which is much less important than how much sunscreen is applied. More than 99% of sunscreen users apply far too little to achieve rated SPF values.

I invite DermRounds members to visit our website for the general public at skincheck.org and for health educators at melanomaeducation.net and, if you are able, to help us further communicate the efficacy of our free program to health educators by sharing on your social media platforms.

Stephen A. Fine, Ph.D.
Founder and President
Melanoma Education Foundation
978-535-3080