To mark National Skin Cancer Awareness Month, a group dedicated to educating schoolchildren about the hazards of too much sun exposure will hold a reception Wednesday to honor winners of its annual poster contest.
The SHADE Foundation runs the competition in partnership with the EPA’s SunWise program, a popular skin cancer eduction outreach initiative that provides resources to schools and educational organizations. The poster contest promotes a key tenet of the SunWise philosophy: A little bit of time spent addressing the issue in school every year can yield measurable changes in children’s sun-protection behavior.
But if President Barack Obama’s budget recommendation is followed, this will be the last time SunWise co-sponsors the poster contest. The administration has proposed cutting the program to save the annual $1 million appropriation.
By many measures, SunWise is a cost-effective success story. A study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2008 concluded that every dollar spent on SunWise saves an estimated $2 to $4 in medical costs. Funding the program through fiscal 2015, the survey found, would prevent more than 50 premature deaths and 11,000 skin cancer cases.
Since the program launched in 2000, more than 31,000 schools and 5,700 organizations nationwide have taught the curriculum, according to the agency.
In 2005, Arizona became the first state to require that SunWise be taught in all public schools before ninth grade, and the Utah Legislature passed a resolution in 2006 encouraging schools to….
Read the rest of this article on Roll Call: Advocates Fight to Stop Sunset of Skin Cancer Program
