While many of us do the best we can to address our health concerns as symptoms arise, Less Cancer’s founder Bill Couzens has been working tirelessly for over twenty years to teach people what it means to embrace a community model of preventative healthcare. In doing so his organization has reduced stress and medical bill costs as well as saved countless lives.
Though these efforts have had far-reaching positive effects across the nation and the world, Bill has remained centered where his work began, in Warrenton, Virginia. So, on Wednesday December 3 Less Cancer hosted a panel of experts for a discussion at the Warrenton First Baptist Church about how community members can help each other recognize the signs of skin cancer on Black and Brown skin and say something when they see something which looks suspicious.
The panel of experts was welcomed by the Warrenton First Baptist’s Reverend Dwayne Brown, who is also a forensic scientist as well as an emergency room nurse. This was followed by a short video in which Less Cancer board member and Living Single sitcom creator Yvette Bowser shared an introductory statement about the importance of identifying skin cancer early.
The conversation then segued over to Tricia Petzold, MD who joined virtually from Utah where she practices integrative medicine and teaches food as medicine at the University of Utah. Tricia shared her wisdom on how emergency room protocols relate to cancer diagnoses and how important it is to be grounded in care when telling someone you would like them to get their skin checked out.
Monica Baskin, PhD, the Deputy Director of Research at VCU’s Massey Comprehensive Center, emphasized how rural communities and communities of color have an ingrained cultural approach to healthcare, which is based more on seeking out emergency care when all else has failed. In order to shift this, she noted the importance of encouraging nonjudgmental peer-to-peer messaging to help motivate people to get themselves to the doctor before a small issue becomes a big problem.
Tammy Le Graffe, RN, who is the Director of the Culpeper Free Clinic also emphasized the importance of peer-to-peer conversations to support better health outcomes but noted the reality that it’s very difficult to have a conversation about an emerging issue when a critical health issue is unfolding. To assist in this process, she spoke to the importance of helping people receive financial assistance for more specialized medical care and having staff and volunteers help people fill out necessary paperwork so they can be reassured that the financial burden won’t make their healthcare cost-prohibitive.
Rob Marino, MSW is the Director of the Fauquier Free Clinic in Warrenton, and he also highlighted how the cost of care made preventative medicine so prohibitive for those who are making less than the median area income of roughly $130,000 a year. In fact, most clients at the Free Clinic make roughly $15,000 or less annually, so when a medical bill costs $200, this can be the equivalent of fewer groceries purchased or a late rent check that month. Rob noted that if anyone in Fauquier or Rappahannock Counties is struggling with paying for healthcare, they should absolutely come to see him at the Free Clinic.
Trust was certainly on the mind of Pharmacist and local organic farmer extraordinaire Eugene Triplett as he recognized those in his profession were very trusted once upon a time – but as industry policies have caused prescription medicine costs to soar, this has been less and less the case. Eugene himself is known and trusted in the community, and he welcomed the idea of creating a faith-based coalition to bring more awareness to preventative healthcare in order to help people catch cancer and other medical issues early on. He also noted that neighboring Madison County has the 2nd highest rate of prostate cancer in the state of Virginia and that looking for patterns in diagnoses is another way to encourage regions to conduct health screenings to reduce loss of life and build community resiliency.
As the founder of A Closer Look Project LLC, Caleb Runyon, NP, knows what it means to collaborate with his community to identify possible warning signs on the skin and encourage early cancer screenings. He gave a short demonstration on how he trains community members to look for skin abnormalities and said that people often forget to put sunscreen on their scalp but men with receding hairlines, even those with Black and Brown skin, really need to be mindful of this. He also brought attention to the fact that a normal wait time to see a dermatologist is over 2 months long, but his organization can help people book an appointment in 48 hours.
Board-certified nurse practitioner, dermatology educator, researcher, and entrepreneur, Kimberly Madison, DNP, was also very passionate about the importance of using sunscreen. She spoke to the dearth of research into how Black and Brown skin responds to the majority of sunscreens on the market and suggested those with a darker skin tone use mineral-based tinted sunscreens to avoid a white ashen residue. Kimberly cited the Flexner Report as our current US medical model is largely adopted from Germany in that clients are often seen as being there to serve the science rather than the science serving the patients. This reality is only exacerbated by the fact that the medical industry lacks representation – for instance, only 5% of dermatologists in the country are Black or Brown, which is part of the reason there is less research centered on darker skin. As a way to reduce cancer diagnoses, Kimberly encouraged a robust application of sunscreen every day, year-round, inside or outside, as well as wearing clothing that helps deflect UV rays.
Through continued conversations and community education and outreach, we can and must change the way our society deals with its health. Now more than ever, as our healthcare infrastructure buckles under the weight of lost federal funding and an increasingly uninsured population, it is essential that we actively utilize preventative and community care to keep ourselves well.
There is a Chinese Proverb attributed to the text Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine) which was likely compiled over the course of several centuries but is often celebrated as having been published around 2600 BCE during Huangdi’s reign as Emperor of China which states: ‘The superior doctor prevents sickness; the mediocre doctor attends to impending sickness; the inferior doctor treats actual sickness’.
Several thousand years later, in 1735, right here in the United States of America, Benjamin Franklin espoused a very similar sentiment when he suggested “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. Yet still, even though we’ve had this wisdom available to us for centuries, we are just barely scratching the surface of what it means to embrace preventative and proactive, rather than symptomatic and reactive healthcare.
No longer just a luxury for those with wealth and the luxury of time, our focus on proactive, preventative healthcare requires a structural shift in how we consciously address our health across the socioeconomic stratum. Because, as panelist Dr. Baskin so eloquently put it, we all deserve to celebrate more birthdays, enjoy more holidays, and live to spend more time with those we love.
So remember- whether you are a nail technician, a barber, a beautician, a stylist, a massage therapist, a nurse, a physician, a faith leader, a tattoo artist, a family member, a trusted friend, or otherwise – with kindness, compassion, and care for those around you – if you see something- say something. Because saving each other’s lives is always going to be worth the conversation.