Teaching Hair Stylists to Detect Possible Melanoma

A hair salon in New Orleans is teaching stylists to identify skin cancer on their clients’ scalps as a way to help increase the rate of early melanoma detection.

Mark the SPOT! is a Melanoma Research Foundation-affiliated program that instructs hair stylists on how to recognize suspicious moles and lesions. Hairdresser Lois Eiermann decided to reach out to the campaign after she noticed an unusual looking spot on a client’s head. “I had a client, Ms. Evelyn, and she came in and I told her that she had a spot on her scalp that looks suspicious, and to go get it checked,” she told Indianapolis’ WTHR. “I didn’t see her for a while. When she came back in the next time, her son said, ‘we want to thank you, you saved her life.’ She had squamous cell, and she wouldn’t have seen it in her scalp.”

Since we’re not able to detect spots on our scalps ourselves, hair stylists have an advantage of identifying any possibly suspicious lesion during the washing and cutting process. Mark the SPOT! teaches stylists to check the scalp, neck, and ears for spots that are bigger than a pencil eraser, dark brown, black, or appear to be unusual looking in general. If they see an abnormal lesion, they’re encouraged to discreetly tell their client to have a dermatologist assess the spot.