Initiatives

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The Jeff Dulude Melanoma Foundation, and our campaign Defeat Melanoma, have been significantly successful . Our impact includes:

• Becoming the non-profit leader in skin cancer prevention
• Building the Melanoma Action Coalition (MAC), a nation-wide organization of a dozen family melanoma foundations
• Initiating a coordinated effort for Melanoma Monday to provide early skin cancer detection
• Working with the Surgeon General to educate the population on the dangers of UV exposure and to eliminate the use of tanning beds
• Lobbying public policy with the American Cancer Society through
• Sun Smart Campuses/Tan Free Campuses

We need your help to accomplish our mission of preventing melanoma, a preventable cancer. In particular, we are building awareness that UV exposure from tanning beds causes melanoma. Melanoma is growing at 2% each year, the fastest growing cancer in the United States. Our foundation is the leader in creating awareness in young people of the dangers of UV exposure.

We won’t be content until tanning beds do not exist.  Australia has prohibited tanning beds for all commercial use, and now the United States must do the same. The FDA helped a great deal in December 2015 by banning the use of tanning beds by those under 18 years of age, and requiring those over 18 to sign a waiver that they acknowledge that tanning beds cause skin cancer. God bless the FDA. There are still those who will use tanning beds, despite the cancer risk, out of stupidity. We need to increase awareness of the dangers of tanning beds and work to eliminate their existence. Please help us in this work. Help us spread the word through media by donating!

38% of the US Population does not believe that UV exposure causes cancer. One out of three women use tanning beds, per the CDC in 2015. In a survey at major beaches, sun seekers reported that they “forgot” sunblock or to put on one application for every six hours on the beach. Australia reduced the incidence of melanoma by double digits for each of the last two decades! The state and federal government was supportive of this change. If you don’t wear a hat or long sleeve shirt and pants while you work an outdoor job, you cannot collect worker’s compensation in Australia. Children with out a hat, are not allowed to play outdoor recess in Australia. The US does not have this public policy to imitate Australia’s successful work.

Defeat Melanoma, a campaign of the Jeff Dulude Melanoma Foundation, is dedicated to implementing public policy in the US to prevent skin cancer. We need to influence 9-12 graders of the danger of UV exposure. We need to get hats and sunscreen on all school-aged children. Per the Surgeon General, we need to build sun shelters in public places. In February 2016, our Foundation will be in Washington, DC, meeting with policy makers to institutionalize the protection of US citizens to UV exposure, a known carcinogen.

In August 2015, the CDC states that those requiring the greatest education on the dangers of UV exposure are kids in grades 9-12. Our foundation is working to evaluate existing programs for content. In sun scary states, like California, Arizona, Colorado and Florida, we need to establish state-wide programs.