You Have the Power to Prevent Cancer

With cancer rates increasing and affecting more people every year, I felt it was important to educate the younger generation about the potential factors that could put them at risk of receiving a cancer diagnosis later in life. I thought that this was important to do because most students, especially in rural communities, are not taught the factors that increase your risk of getting cancer in the future. This leads to students not having the tools to think about the repercussions that their actions can have in their distant future in regard to their risk of getting cancer. I went to six schools throughout the valley and the White Mountains of Arizona with differing education levels and demographics to provide them with prevention strategies that they could implement into their daily lives to reduce their risk of getting cancer in the future. Some of the schools had curriculums that included cancer and some of the factors that increase your risk, while others never mention what is happening biologically when a person has cancer. I introduced factors such as no smoking or tobacco use, diet, exercise, sunscreen use, avoiding alcohol, and getting screened regularly. While at each school, I discussed the importance of creating these healthy habits while they are young because cancer is a disease that comes from the accumulation of mutations that can begin occurring in their bodies even now. After my presentation, 98.6% of the 305 students who viewed my presentation felt like they had learned something from the presentation and were almost all willing to implement at least one of the changes into their daily lives.