Thursday, March 08, 2007

TV ANCHORWOMAN BRINGS CANCER FIGHT TO JLHS

As a cancer survivor, KRON-4 TV's Ysabel Duron knows the importance of early cancer detection. That's why her latest non-profit venture, Latinas Contra Cancer is launching a Cervical Health Initiative in February 2007. They plan 4 Mother/Daughter rallies in Santa Clara County high schools to educate Latinas about the HPV virus and cervical cancer. James Lick High School will host a rally on March 15th.
The mission of LCC is to save lives through education, access and early detection. 2 times as many Latinas get cervical cancer as the mainstream population.
The campaign is targeting 1000 low-income, Spanish-speaking mothers and their daughters who often lack awareness, and face income, cultural and social barriers to education and health care. LCC trained 16 teen peer educators to help lead their unique bi-lingual educational game, Cervical Health Bingo, at the rallies.
The bingo serves as an icebreaker, works to dispel myth and misinformation, and opens up taboo conversation about this deadly disease. The human papilloma virus is the source of cervical cancer and is a sexually transmitted disease. The teens and their mothers will learn this is not about sex but about health and a life saving vaccine. At the beginning of the campaign, one of the girls took the invitation home to her father; her mother is in Iraq. He listened and learned and took her to get the vaccine. That’s one less LCC has to worry about.
LCC has invited the public health department, and clinics to provide as many low cost screenings, pap smears and the HPV vaccine as possible.
If this unique educational event and the CHB tool works as effectively as expected, LCC plans to make the program available to other Latino health care providers to launch in their communities.
The first rally was held February 8th at Gilroy High School and 102 mothers and daughters attended. 14 girls or 30% of attendees signed up for the new HPV vaccine. The three other schools are Latino College Prep Academy at NHU, James Lick High School and Downtown College Prep.
The Cervical Health Initiative is the primary education campaign leading up to LCC’s
2007 Mother’s Day Walk Against Cancer, May 13th, in downtown San Jose, which will turn the spotlight on cervical and breast cancer.
For more information you can visit her website:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i remember this event at lick. i remember making the posters and preparing for the event.