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ShareWear Your Awareness™ Educational Campaign
Children will be exposed to UV radiation their whole lives. UV radiation is a serious public health threat that the FDA has now classified as a human carcinogen along with asbestos, radon and tobacco smoke. Scientists have discovered that the ozone layer is thinning and allowing more UV rays to reach the earth's surface.
When creating awareness for melanoma, it is never too early to start checking and educating children. Although melanoma awareness is important for everyone, early education and early detection are surely the best forms of prevention, and who better to start with than our children?
In younger age groups, such as toddlers and elementary age children, it is important to implement sun protection as an everyday regiment. If applying sunscreen each day is made as habitual as the brushing of teeth or washing of hands, then the chances of a child going outside unprotected decline substantially. If children understand why sunscreen, hats, and other sun protecting agents are so important, they will be more prone to carry these sun protection habits throughout their lives.
Melanoma is a scary subject for anyone, and surely a difficult topic to present to young children. The key is to present melanoma in a way that children can relate to and understand, while still maintaining the seriousness of this disease. An educational tactic that children can comprehend and implement is the ABCDE's of melanoma detection. Very young children can begin learning the ABCDE's with parental guidance. Learning this tactic at a young age will give children the ability to detect irregular and suspicious moles on their own in the future. The ABCDE's explain how to detect melanoma in a mole.
It is a fact of life that children age, they turn into teenagers and young adults. As these children age, it is apparent that mothers and fathers will no longer be able to chase their children around with hats and sunscreen bottles. All the while, teenagers will be flocking to golf courses, driving ranges, beaches, lakes, sports complexes and parks, particularly during mid-day hours. Teenagers must be reminded; reminded to apply sunscreen, reminded to re-apply, reminded to wear protective clothing, and reminded to avoid the sun from 10am to 4pm if at all possible. Despite the redundancy, these are important factors in melanoma prevention and cannot be emphasized enough.
Children and teenagers in older age groups face pressures and encounter situations involving melanoma that a younger children may not have to face. It is here that parental support and exmple will prevail. Tanning beds, for example, are morbidly dangerous yet condoned by society and marketed toward teenagers and young adults. Tanning beds are fasely marketed as "safe" tanning, and teenagers are accepting these notions. It is not only sun protection that is important in the fight against melanoma, now there are sunless agents equally as dangerous as the sun, if not more so.
For all children -
- Buy clothing with built in UV protection
- Avoid direct sunlight between the hours of 10am and 4pm
- Wear sunscreen with SPF 15 or higher
- Sunscreen is NOT recommended for infants until the age of 6 months
- Reapply sunscreen frequently and apply to the entire body, even if covered by clothing.
- A white cotton shirt when wet from water or sweat has zero protection!
- Wear a hat that covers ears and neck along with sunglasses with UV protection in them.
- Avoid tanning beds
The Dean Hedstrom Foundation aims to promote education, sun protection and detection of melanoma. By distributing Wear Your Awareness™ kits, UV detector bracelets, specially designed age approriate information materials and participating in community outreach education programs with schools, community organizations and athletic associations, the foundation will be able to reach out to the children and help save lives.
