Oral, Head & Neck Cancer Awareness Month
Oral Cancer awareness in the American public is low. One of our mission's and that of the dental and medical community is to raise people's awareness of a disease that is taking a life every hour of the day in the US. We encourage medical and dental offices as well as treatment facilities and hospitals to routinely have days in which the public may come to their office or facility and receive a simple visual and tactile screening at no charge. So while it is important that the national awareness month (April) has hundreds of offices and doctors opening their doors to the public, the disease does not go away in other months. Please consider having routine public screening days throughout the year as your practice and facilities schedule will allow. The foundation's calendar system will accept your screening events all year long, our staff will help you understand how to properly promote your event, and we will provide you with the necessary forms, posters, and educational handouts that you need to have a successful event. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to call the foundation and discuss with our staff your needs and ideas to be engaged in this important effort.
2012 Oral Cancer Awareness Month.
As usual, for the 13th year in a row, April will be the official oral cancer awareness month in the US. We will be posting the information regarding the month, and the 2012 awareness screening events, on our current events calendar, showing locations, dates and times for the registered sites involved, located HERE
Numerous organizations, institutions and private medial and dental practitioners are cooperating to make this the largest national awareness month and screening week ever. All the events that we are notified of, screening sites, walks, lectures, etc. will be posted on our event calendar regardless of who the sponsoring dental or medical office, institution, or organization is. Through this group collaboration, we are working to see this disease brought to the attention of as many individual people as possible, and see that oral cancers get the national media attention necessary to raise public awareness.
ONLY WITH THE HELP OF A LARGE NETWORK OF PARTICIPATING PROFESSIONAL OFFICES AND FACILITIES WILL THIS BECOME A REALITY.
WE CAN'T DO THIS WITHOUT YOU!
In the UK, oral cancer awareness month is November each year, with many organizations involved in similar early detection programs. The UK Mouth Cancer Foundation, and The British Dental Health Foundation are primary drivers of the events there.
As medical or dental professional how can you help?
We are asking professionals to become engaged in a free screening event, for at least 3 hours on any day during the month of April (during awareness month), in your community. Opportunistic screening is our best hope of reducing the death rate from this disease. OCF will support you with the materials that you need to conduct the event, and help you get exposure for it in your community and on our heavily Googled event calendar. We will also provide you with ideas on how your office can promote its event, which is key to getting a great turn out. Please pick a date, and click on the add your event button at the bottom of the page to begin the process. Once we see your event submitted, you will be on our list to receive support materials in the month of March.
Support Materials for participating doctors and institutions
For those involved in the 2012 screening events, OCF will provide patient related handout literature, a pre-written, customized press releases that can be used in local community media opportunities, a talking points sheets for those that get media interviews, oral cancer screening forms for patient charts, referral forms for patients that need a second opinion, and support materials for your staff on the day of your screening. Downloadable PDF documents screening docs and forms are available at this link.
Promoting your event once it is on the OCF calendar
This year we have inserted a box of quick links on your event page. This will allow you to with one click, add the event with all of the maps and links in it, to your personal or professional Facebook page, Twitter, and other social networking and calendar sites such the ones run by Yahoo, AOL, Google, Digg etc. You can also email the page to anyone through a simple one click interface. We urge you to send out invitations through that mechanism and ask those people to pass the invitation along to coworkers, family and friends. Please make the time to use these free mechanisms to spread the word of your event to as many people as possible to ensure a good turn out on your screening day. Combined with the prepared press release that we provide you when inserted into your local newspaper, building awareness of your event will be much easier as the news of your event goes viral through your outreach efforts. Remember that opening your office to the public is a practice building event. Individuals that attend your event for their free screening, are good candidates to become future members of your permanent patient population. Click here for a full description of what the most successful locations have done to bring large volumes of traffic to their event.
Ready to pick a date and add your event to this years effort?
OCF's Partners for the 2012 Oral Cancer Awareness Month
We will be expanding our group of strategic partners in 2012. If your organization wishes to be an official partner of the foundation, please contact the foundation's director, Brian Hill at 949-723-4400 (Pacific time zone)
Professional Dental Organizations
Corporate Sponsors
University Partners
Get Involved
As a private individual, company, or member of the medical dental profession, do you have a blog, a web site, or other vehicle in which you can reach out to others? The viral spread of the oral cancer message, and a need for national attention to a disease that is growing in incidence every year, and which many knowledgable treatment professionals are using the word epidemic to describe, can cascade public awareness into positive change.
Put a link on your site to the Oral Cancer Foundation to raise awareness of the diseases. Grass roots viral spread of the idea is an inexpensive means to achieving our goals of reduce deaths from oral cancers through early discovery. A couple of simple facts such as; 100 new people in the US EVERY DAY will be newly diagnosed with an oral cancer, and that one person EVERY HOUR OF THE DAY, 24/7/365 will die from it will help people understand that it is not rare, and screening for it is as important as their their cervical, prostate, breast and other exams cancer exams that are now so common to us all. With the billions of web sties, and social networking entities like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. out there, will you help make this message go viral?
Help us spread the word about oral, head & neck cancer awareness month by posting this banner or your blog or web site. Just copy the code below the banner and paste it into your desired page. If you use Twitter please press the button.
TweetHelp promote Oral Cancer Awareness Week on your own web site
Copy the code in the window below and paste it on your web site, blog etc. to help spread the word about this national effort.
Spread the word about the Oral Cancer Foundation
Copy the code in the window below and paste it on your web site, blog etc. to help spread information about the disease, and the work of OCF.
