Update on all of our Skin of Steel Activities

Hi Folks,
It has been whirlwind recently in terms of our launch of Skin of Steel, collaborative work with Rush, Christopher's admittance into all 5 of his colleges, Sachi taking a lead role on the SOS Board, Mas keeping us all a float financially, Grandma Joan flying in at the last minute so as not to miss the Brainstorm...and me continuing with the chemo combo and braf inhibitor treatment.

SOS now has a professional identity courtesy of Kurt Meinecke and Barb Lynk of Group Chicago.  Be sure to check us out online at skinofsteel.org as well as on Facebook.  We have a logo suitable for multiple audiences.  We also have a fabulous new SOS Shade & Awareness Tent and a 16 foot wide double sided banner that is available for Health Fairs, Recreational Events, Corporate Wellness Programs, etc.,.


We held our first Brainstorm at Youth Services new facility hoping we could get 50 invitees to show up and 150 showed up.  We now have a database of 383 individuals and our website has over 1,000 hits.  Hard to believe we started this only 3 months ago.  


The Brainstorm generated incredible interest that we are corralling into feasible strategies for sun safety awareness, prevention training, early detection, comprehensive treatment, institutional coalitions, corporate relations, and government advocacy.  My hats off to Glenbrook South High School Prinicipal, Brian Wegley for taking the plunge and declaring academic year 2010-11 to be dedicated to sun safety.  13 GBS students led our Brainstorm breakout sessions, while another 6 started working on a baseline survey of student sun practices and use of tanning salons with our SOS Advisor and Northwestern Medical School Professor, June Robinson.  Interestingly, word got out very fast.  Within a week, seven area high schools inquired as to how they could get "sun safety training that would really speak to their high school students".


It is this latter comment that keeps me up at night thinking how to make sun safety as common place as putting on a seat belt or refraining from smoking.  The goal is clear but we haven't come up with the right message yet.  Some believe the only way is through fear...others disagree.  Clearly we need to try harder.  We are looking carefully at how to identify the right spokesperson.


Right on the heels of the Brainstorm, I took our first SOS Outreach Team of Karen Hirsch, Jodi Shannahan, Sharon Mann, Liz Garvey, Debbie Hepburn, and Marie Fischl, to the Los Angeles Free Clinic run by Remote Area Medical.  We provided outreach for 8,400 over 7 days at the LA Sports Arena. Our team was assisted by medical and undergrad students from UC Irvine's Spot a Spot program.  We referred over 500 patients for follow up with dermatologists.  While educating, we distributed 8,400 Aveeno sunscreen samples to construction workers, boom operators, poets, teachers, photographers, real estate agents, small business owners, young children, teens, and people of all colors.  Maria Shriver visited our SOS exhibit and we were invited to attend her upcoming Women's Conference. We were interviewed by a variety of outlets including AP International and the Japanese Business Journal "Frontline".  But mostly we were humbled by the patients' intelligence, humility, and willingness to learn.  The lack of both skin cancer outreach and skin clinics in California, the state with the highest melanoma death rates, suggests that other states are probably in a similar situation.  


Consequently, while we were out there, SOS started building a local consortium comprised of the LA County Supervisor Ridely-Thomas' Health Care Policy Coordinator, Dermatologists from USC, Cedars Sinai, UCLA, Kaiser, a Management Consultant affiliated with the Taproot organization, a Melanoma survivor and a possible corporate foundation devoted to safety clinics.  We believe that this was the intent of RAM in terms of the evolution of people like you and me identifying our own public solutions to health care rather than waiting.


Next week I turn my attention to consortium building on the homefront. Dr. Kaufman and I continue to speak out on the benefits of collaboration on a Chicago-wide basis.  It seems we now have interest from Northwestern, Univ of IL-Chicago, Loyola, and Lutheran General.  After attending the BIO Int'l Conference on Monday, at the bequest of SOS Advisor Ray Drymalksi, I have also initiated contact with eleven pharmaceutical, biomed foundation, and government entities that are interested in our efforts.  What was perhaps most interesting observation from the conference, is the number of pharma subsidiaries coming out with Melanoma diagnostic tools.  Maybe the facts, that skin cancer is the fastest growing cancer and Melanoma is taking one life an hour, are now registering with the pharma market.


On a final note, it is with so much joy that I get to announce that our son Chris will be headed to Pitzer College next year in Claremont, CA.  Pitzer is part of the Claremont Consortium of 7 schools.  It is known for independently designed programs, social responsibility and global citizenship.  Chris will be able to take courses at Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, and Harvey Mudd.  His current major of Asian Studies and the Japanese Program is run out of Pomona, so he will spend a lot of time there.  Masuo, Sachi and I are proud of Chris' accomplishment thus far and are excited about what he contributes to the world in the future.