One Message, Many Voices: Saluting the Ambassadors of AICR

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image5354459Here at AICR, we espouse a simple, evidence-based and empowering message: Every one of us can take steps to lower our cancer risk.

We enumerate those steps, and the research behind them, in an ever-growing variety of ways, for diverse audiences. Our brochures, health aids and website show people how to put the science of prevention to work in their daily lives.

Some of those people are looking for tips on becoming more active. Some want to try recipes we’ve developed that meet our cancer prevention guidelines. Others wish to dig more deeply into the decades of research behind our advice. Donors want to know how they can help support life-saving research. Scientists want to know about the grants we’ve funded, and which topics will be featured at our research conference.

AICR’s underlying message to all of these different audiences is exactly the same, but we speak in slightly different voices, tailored to their varying needs. The era of one-size-fits-all education, of expecting a single brochure to speak to everyone, is over.

And we can always use help. Help adapting our vital message to specific audiences, help getting into the hands, and the hearts, of the people who stand to benefit from it the most.

That’s why we’re so delighted whenever we see others taking up our banner, and advocating our cause.

All of us at AICR salute those of you who are helping increase awareness of AICR’s message and mission, and sharing the hard-won knowledge that we are not powerless before cancer.


Focus Friday: The 50 Percent Solution

Picture 83This is the final Friday of National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.

If you forget everything else we’ve talked about this month regarding colorectal cancer, please remember this one number:

50. Five-Oh.

As in, 50 percent. As in, take the number of colorectal cancers that occur in the United States each year — about 143,500 — and cut it in half.

That’s how many cases we could prevent, just by making healthier everyday choices.

  • Move more, every day, in every way.
  • Eat more fiber-rich foods like vegetables, whole grains, fruits and beans — and make less room for red meat.
  • While you’re at it, skip cold cuts, bacon, sausage, hot dogs and other processed meats.
  • The more you follow this advice, the easier it’ll be for you to lose the excess body fat that, we now know, makes colorectal cancer more likely.

Fifty percent. One in two.

That’s nearly 72,000 lives that could be spared this debilitating and too-frequently deadly cancer.

All of us at AICR dearly hope you follow the National Cancer Institute’s advice on screening for colorectal cancer. Catching the disease in its early stages can and does save lives.

But we also hope you emerge from National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month with a new awareness that preventing this disease takes place outside of your doctor’s office. It happens every day, hundreds of times, with every small, unremarkable but vitally important choice you make about what to eat and how to live.

 

 

 


The Graying of America and Why It Matters

senior grocery shoppers NL 105 iStock_7832279Have you ever been in the midst of an experience where you could feel your eyes opening to see a wider vision?

I just got back from Chicago, where I was speaking at the American Society on Aging’s annual conference, Aging in America. While there, with thousands of professionals working in diverse fields, I saw a bigger picture of how the growing number of older adults will impact us all.

Each day, more than 10,000 American baby boomers are turning 65. By the year 2030, 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older. The conference gave me new vision on how wide the impact of this will be. Demand will grow for appropriate housing to suit varied needs of older adults, recreational programs as more retired people have time to pursue both new and long-time hobbies, and both preventive and therapeutic health care. Continue reading