Slip, Slop, Slap

I've started writing a case discussion on the subject of health promotion and disease prevention. Since I'm on a Dermatology placement at the moment, it seemed that writing about skin cancer would be the way to go. Rates of malignant melanoma have tripled over the past 20 years. The main reason why people think that may has been the case is the increasing tendency for people to travel abroad for holidays. With so many cheap flights abroad, its no wonder that people with fair skin are taking in more unaccustomed high intensity UV light. In order to try and curb this trend, there have been some pretty good health promotion campaigns to go ahead, led primarily by Australia, the country with the highest rates of melanoma in the world. In Australia one in twenty five men will get a malignant melanoma in their lifetime. The best known campaign was the 'Slip, Slop, Slap' campaign launched in 1981. The idea was to slip on a t-shirt, slop on sunscreen, slap on a hat. Since 1981 rates of melanoma have increased in Australia however the widespread uptake of this campaign has almost certainly slowed down the progression and increased public awareness of the disease. Here in the UK, the public health campaign is led by the British Association of Dermatologists and Cancer Research UK. It'll be interesting now to read more and find out exactly how much of a difference the UK campaign has made since it started.