Cancer Prevention Has No ZIP Code
This article originally appeared on Bill Couzens’s Substack.
People sometimes ask why Less Cancer works across so many subjects. Why do we hold workshops for health professionals, support students, work in communities, and speak with lawmakers? Why does a cancer prevention organization talk about vaccines, drinking water, and Medicaid?
Because cancer prevention does not happen in one place. It is not an on-off switch. It is not a Band-Aid for a cut. It is part of a public health ecosystem with many connected pieces.
Some of our work prevents cancer directly. Some reduces harmful exposures. Some protects people who are especially vulnerable, including those in treatment. And some helps people get and keep the care they need. Each part has a different job, but each connects to our purpose: fewer people facing cancer and better protection for those who do.
Public health systems are sometimes treated as though they take care of people instead of helping people take care of themselves. I see it the other way around. Clean water, access to vaccines, and healthcare coverage give people the means to protect their own health. This takes more than advice to make smarter choices. Policy can change the conditions in which people make those choices and give them a better chance from the start.
For more than 20 years, Less Cancer has worked across this ecosystem. Our National Cancer Prevention Workshop brings health professionals, researchers, community voices, and policymakers together. Our community programs and student work carry prevention beyond any one meeting room. We listen locally, share what we learn more widely, and bring evidence back to the people and places that can use it.
The HPV vaccine is a direct example of cancer prevention. It protects against the types of HPV that cause most cervical, vaginal, vulvar, penile, anal, and certain throat cancers.
Measles vaccination serves a different purpose in this ecosystem. Measles can be especially dangerous for someone whose immune system has been weakened by cancer treatment. Some patients cannot receive the live vaccine while they are severely immunocompromised. Preventing its spread helps protect them.
Clean drinking water and protection from harmful exposures matter before someone becomes ill. Access to healthcare matters when a person needs screening, treatment, or follow-up care. These subjects may look separate on a list. In people’s lives, they are connected.
Some of this work can look political because decisions about water protections, vaccine access, and healthcare coverage are made by governments. That means we need to speak with the people making those decisions—locally, in state capitals, and in Congress. We bring evidence and the experiences of affected people to officials across party lines. Cancer does not ask how someone votes. Neither do we.
Our recent Medicaid work shows what that looks like. We have listened to people facing the possibility of losing coverage, are reaching out to governors and Medicaid officials across all 50 states, and are working with legislators toward bipartisan protections. People in active cancer treatment—including surgery and other invasive treatment—should not lose healthcare because an exemption is too narrow or a reporting process fails them. Cancer treatment is work enough.
I think of a parachute and its many lines. One line connects to vaccines, another to clean water, another to education, and another to healthcare access. They reach different parts of the public health ecosystem, but they all connect back to the work of Less Cancer.
That work may happen here at home in Warrenton, Virginia, across state lines, or across the country. Much of what we learn in one place can help another community. Sometimes a local organization takes an idea and makes it its own. We may help directly, or the work may continue without us. The credit matters far less than people having what they need to protect health in their own towns.
Less Cancer’s classroom has no walls because prevention has no ZIP code.