Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week (April 20, 2014 - April 26, 2014) is a week long series of events to promote education and awareness of cancers of the head and neck region. The highlight of OHANCAW is a day of free screenings across the country.
OHANCAW is sponsored by the Head and Neck Cancer Alliance (formerly known as the Yul Brynner Head and Neck Foundation) but is also organized by grass roots groups of individuals that are knowledgeable about cancers of the head and neck region.The highlight of OHANCAW is a day of free screenings across the country on Friday, April 19th with Board members.
The Mission Statement of OHANCAW is "The Head and Neck Cancer Alliance seeks to enable an organized and strategic alliance of all stakeholders to dramatically shift the stage of discovery of head and neck cancers through united and collaborative efforts in prevention, early detection and research".
The mission involves:
- Providing support to head and neck cancer patients throughout the year
- Supporting ongoing research in head and neck oncology
- Educating children and adults in the disease process, treatment and prevention of head and neck cancer
For the latest happenings and chapters visit Head and Neck Cancer Alliance.
The Risk Factors of Oral, Head and Neck Cancer: Tobacco (including smokeless tobacco) and alcohol use are the most important risk factors for head and neck cancers. People who use both tobacco and alcohol are at greater risk for developing these cancers than people who use either tobacco or alcohol alone. Over the past decade, an increasing number of young, non- smokers have developed mouth and throat cancer associated with the human papilloma virus, or HPV.
Signs & Symptoms May Include:
• A sore in your mouth that doesn’t heal or increases in size
• Persistent pain in your mouth Lumps or white or red patches inside your mouth.
• Thickening of your cheek.
• Difficulty chewing or swallowing or moving your tongue
• Difficulty moving your jaw, or swelling or pain in your jaw
• Soreness in your throat or feeling that something is caught in your throat
• Pain around your teeth, or loosening of your teeth
• Numbness of your tongue or elsewhere in your mouth
• Changes in your voice
• A lump in your neck
• Bad breath
Oral, Head and Neck Cancer:
- Cancer that arises in the head or neck region, including the nasal cavity, sinuses, lips, mouth, thyroid glands, salivary glands, throat, or larynx (voice box)
- In the United States, over 100,000 cases (including thyroid) were expected in 2012.
Famous quotes containing the words head, neck, cancer, awareness and/or week:
“Nor has science sufficient humanity, so long as the naturalist overlooks the wonderful congruity which subsists between man and the world; of which he is lord, not because he is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is its head and heart, and finds something of himself in every great and small thing, in every mountain stratum, in every new law of color, fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence which observation or analysis lay open.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I cruelly hate cruelty, both by nature and reason, as the worst of all the vices. But then I am so soft in this that I cannot see a chicken’s neck wrung without distress, and cannot bear to hear the squealing of a hare between the teeth of my hounds.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Ever since I was a kid my folks fed me bigotry for breakfast and ignorance for supper. Never, not once did they ever make me feel proud of where I was born. That’s it. That was a cancer they put in me. No knowledge of my country. No pride. Just a hymn of hate.”
—Samuel Fuller (b. 1911)
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“[When asked: “If women voted, would they not have to sit on juries?”:] Many women would be glad of a chance to sit on anything. There are women who stand up and wash six days in the week at 75 cents a day who would like to take a vacation and sit on a jury at $1.50.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)