The Arizona Cancer Center has established the Skin Cancer Institute to battle skin cancer throughout the state. The institute will take a multidisciplinary, collaborative approach to tackling the disease, uniting laboratory researchers, clinicians, and health educators behind its eradication.

"The Skin Cancer Institute is one of the few places in the United States where a patient can access dermatologists, oncologists, surgeons, and health care educators in one location," explains Robin Harris, associate professor of public health and deputy director of the Skin Cancer Institute.

Included in the institute's plan of attack are educational and community outreach programs, offering better training for educators and, eventually, the opening of the Prevention Resource Center—a clearinghouse of skin cancer prevention information.

As an aid to early detection, the institute has also opened the Pigmented Lesion Clinic, which will help patients track increases in the number of moles on their skin. Patients with such increases are at high risk for developing melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer.

According to the Arizona Cancer Center, skin cancer is the most common form of cancer, and has a higher incidence than all other types of cancers combined. In Arizona, which is second only to Australia in the number of cases of non-melanoma skin cancer detected each year, the American Cancer Society estimates that 1,300 Arizonans will be diagnosed in 2007 with melanoma.

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For more information:

"Skin Cancer Institute wants to inform," Tucson Citizen, 07/17/2007