Playing It “Sun Safe”

Lisa Angell teaches kindergarteners about the virtues of sunscreen.

When it comes to cancer prevention, Lisa Angell may just have the most important job in the whole county: making “slip, slop, slap, and wrap” a habit. She tries to instill the habit in children, some as young as 4, because that’s when it does the most good.

Slipping on a shirt, slopping on sunscreen, slapping on a hat, and wrapping on sunglasses is about the only way – other than indoor confinement – to prevent skin cancer, she happily tells anyone who will listen. “There’s a definite connection between sun exposure as a child and the occurrence of skin cancer in adulthood. Ninety-five percent of all skin cancers are caused by overexposure to the sun.” Angell is manager of skin cancer prevention for the Indian River County Unit of the American Cancer Society (ACS) and has been heralding the message of its Sun Safe program, full time, since last August.

Read the entire article in the Summer 2002 issue