About Us

As you may be able to see in the picture to the right, I have fair skin and blue eyes. In recent years, my skin has become quite sensitive to the sun, and I am prone to burn easily.

Over the last fifteen years of so, I have had a number of skin cancer lesions removed from my skin, including my face, neck, back, and forearms. A large chuck of my lower lip was also hacked away. There is a reason for this.

Thourghout my life, I have been exposed to the sun — make that over exposed to the sun — as an athlete in several outdoor sports. These have included competitive swimming (14 yrs), alpine skiing (35 yrs), soccer (18 yrs), and sailing (45 yrs), road cycling (15 yrs), and I have been going to the beach for the past 40 years. For more than 50 years, I also have done a fair amount of outside work, including farming, lawn mowing, house painting, and so on.

These periods of exposure are not consecutive, they are parallel.

When I was a kid coming up through the AAU age groups in competitive swimming at the Wichita Swim Club, almost no one used sun screens. In fact, among the hard core swimmers of the Wichita Swim Club, having sun-bleached hair, no skin on our noses, badly burned skin peeling off of our backs was cool. The worse our skin looked, the cooler. In those days, we spent 6 to 8 hours every day in practice. There were meets every weekend. And almost all of us had jobs mowing lawns, working constuction, and so on. In the spring we ran track and in the fall cross country. For more than 8 months of every year, we were in the sun for long periods of time — almost every day.

In college, I began to be more sensible, and over the years, I began to wear more clothing and use sun screen regularly. I had to. My skin had already become sensitive to the sun. Now, I have to be very careful, and I must get an inspection sticker every few months.

My son was an alpine ski racer who grew up racing against Bode Miller. Both of these kids were constantly exposed to the sun year round. In the summer, they went off to summer race camps on glaciers in Europe, South America, and at Mt. Hood.

Unlike when I was coming up through athletics, we did stress protection from the sun in all of our son's activities, particularly at high altitude summer race camps. For maie ski racers who use sun screen, just about the only place that is not fully protected is the ear.

Sure enough, in 2004, at the age of 27, my son was stricken with an aggressive, invasive skin cancer — in his right ear. A complicated emergency surgery was performed at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary by a briliant surgeon, Dr. Michael McKenna. Without this operation, our lives would be very different today.

Over the years, I have lost very close friends and soul mates to melanoma.

No one in athletics ever discussed the risks of skin cancer with my parents, my coaches, me, my son, any member of our family, or any of my friends.

That was then. This is now.

Failure to educate and protect athletes, coaches, and officials in high risk sports is flat out wrong, and something needs to be done about it.

The purpose of our website is to help build and sustain a movement, not an organization.

The movement is encouraging individuals, coaches, parents, and commercial sponsors to encourage the leaders of all major outdoor sports organizations and coaches associations in high risk sports to develop and implement effective skin cancer education and prevention programs.

Why?

For millions of people in the United States, outdoor sports are gateways to skin cancer. Skin cancer is one of the most common malignancies in the U.S. and the world. Of all forms of cancer, melanoma is among the most feared and deadly.

Melanoma is normally triggered by exposure to UVB radiation from sunlight. In the U.S., participation in outdoor sports, particularly among whites, exposes young children to risk factors directly related harmful amounts of UVB radiation from the sun that are elevated over what they were 20 to 30 years ago. The ozone layer has been depleted, and it will not be restored for at least the next 20 to 30 years.

Over the course of their athletic careers, athletes in outdoor sports continue to be exposed to harmful UVB. As adults, the pattern continues. With each passing year of excess exposure to UVB from sunlight, the risk of getting melanoma or non-melanoma skin cancer increase.

Also at major risk are coaches and officials who often spend decades working outside in the sun.

We believe that those who run major sports organizations have a responsibility to take pro active steps to educate young athletes, coaches, assistants, officials, and parents with respect to understanding and reducing risk factors related to sun exposure and skin cancer.

Absent such leadership, it is up to individuals to take responsibility for protecting themselves. The keys are (a) awareness of the risk factors and (b) prevention.

Fortunately, when it comes to protecting yourself, your children, your athletes, and your colleagues from harmful UVB, prevention requires very little, if any, money. It is mostly a matter of making a habit of sun awareness, using common sense, and taking steps that are appropriate in your sport(s).

Our movement is intended to be a large tent. Any person who is willing can contribute to the movement simply by encouraging any organization in a high risk sport to devise and implement skin cancer education and prevention programs.

Contact Info

We are most anxious to hear about exceptional efforts by individuals and organizations that should be mentioned on this website.

Please address your email messages with news, comments, and suggestions to:

info@www.preventskincancer.org

You also should use our discussion blog.

Thanks,

jvs jr.