As we navigated COVID-19 the past year and a half, most of us experienced public health practices that felt restrictive and inconvenient. The reality is that sometimes public health measures are terribly inconvenient, but they save lives every day.
When it comes to cancer we understand that there are educational tools and policies that can make transformative changes not just in public health, but specifically with cancer and several other chronic diseases where lives are saved. We understand things like smoking, diet, exercise, and several other channels of public health that not only include how we live but where we live.
Experts in science, medicine and public health understand the value of prevention, but it can be a complicated sell for people outside of the medical or public health loop. Proactive public health measures may feel punitive to individuals even though those actions critically impact life-and-death health, social and economic issues.
We are unique as a cancer organization, possibly the only one of our kind because we deal with specifics guiding Individuals, families, and communities with the leadership tools to impact their health and environment. Because we want to utilize the most up-to-date, transparent science available, we also want to ensure that there are no special interests and the content remains untinted or shaded in such a way that the message could potentially be altered.
Educational tools and policies are the springboard for transformative changes for public health and specifically the prevention of cancer and other chronic diseases. Lives can be saved—and are being saved.
I am especially passionate about our work that ensures that those who are “crowded out” by poverty, mental or physical disabilities, or social issues such as race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, nationality or education, receive the tools to address their health issues, raise their quality of life, and increase longevity for themselves, their families, and their communities.
Fundraising for Less Cancer often comes down to my talking to individuals one on one. As the organization grows and educates more healthcare providers in North America and globally, this individual fundraising effort obviously becomes harder.
Enter Less Cancer’s Bike Ride America. Evolving over the years, the bike ride has become the primary fundraiser for our flagship program: the National Cancer Prevention Workshop. The event brings the greatest minds and perspectives to not only students and policymakers but also to healthcare providers, including physicians, nurses and public health professionals. The headline here is: It saves lives.
Less Cancer is not part of a big cancer-treating machine, but it is a global cancer prevention solution that can only happen with your support.