15-40 Connection joined our community Friday, January 25th. 15-40 connection talks about the importance of early detection and what warning signs of cancer might look like. They speak about the importance of what your great feels like and how small things that are out of the ordinary for a two weeks period of time might be just what you need to seek out the advice of your primary care physician. When you speak with your doctor you must be honest. This presentation is part of the New Fifth Form Wellness Forum, but because of the importance of the message, 1 out of 2 males and 1 out of 3 females will be diagnosed with cancer.
Here is a description of 15-40 Connection from Education and Community Outreach Director, Helene Winn. "About twelve years ago, our founder read a white page paper that highlighted the fact that cancer survival rates in the 15-40 year old age group hadn't improved in almost 40-years.
Other age groups were seeing improvement in survival rates (i.e. pediatric cancer, older adults w/ cancer) but survival rates for that group were stagnant. There was a wide range of reasons why this seemed to be the case, but it really came down to late detection. Individuals in that group don't tend to go to the doctor as frequently and/or don't necessarily think "cancer" as a potential diagnosis, which tends to lead to later detection and, consequently, unimproved survival rates.
Our founder, after reading this, felt strongly that people needed to know about the impact early detection can make on both survival rates and treatment options and that there are things we can all do as individuals to give us a better chance of detecting things early if something does start to go wrong with our health and, as a result, founded 15-40 Connection.
While the statistic about that age group was a motivating factor behind starting this organization, we now run programs for people of all ages and the health strategies we discuss are applicable whether you're in that 15-40 age group or not."