Education

RDK’s network of Students Against Melanoma is committed to empowering young people to lead skin cancer education and prevention initiatives in their schools and communities. SAM Clubs are student-run clubs that meet once a month in high schools and colleges to encourage all youth to get involved and stay sun safe in the fight against melanoma.

Feel free to explore RDK’s SunSmart America™ K-12 Curriculum. These resources promote the SunSmart America™ message and provide teachers with information anda range of classroom activities on skin cancer and sun protection for all grade levels.

Our mission is to save lives through education about the prevention and early detection of skin cancer, especially Melanoma.

The Foundation’s vision is “to educate children throughout the country and give them the skills necessary to make healthy sun safety choices throughout their lives.” As the Foundation grows we will continue to advocate for school districts throughout the country to require sun safety education as part of their curriculum.

Overview:

This science experiment is designed to demonstrate how sunscreen counteracts, or blocks, the effects of the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays.

How does sunscreen work? Does using sunscreen really make a big difference to our skin? Do we really need to use it? You tell us at the end this experiment
Materials Needed:
Construction paper (Darker is better)

Sunscreen (SPF 30+)

Leaves and flowers (or any other item to "print")
...

Overview:
Clouds are made of water- In order for the liquid water on earth to turn into clouds, it has to first become a gas known as water vapor. (A process called evaporation). To form clouds, the water vapor has to collect, or condense, into tiny droplets of water (A process called condensation) In order for the water vapor to condense, it needs something to condense onto, like dust or smoke or hairspray, in our case.

Recommended Age Range: Preschool, Kindergart...

Overview:
In this activity, students will learn how the sun was used before traditional clocks to tell time:

The ancient Egyptians made the earliest known sundial in about 3500 bc. This sundial was simply a stick or a pillar that cast a shadow on the ground. The ancient Greeks made a sundial with a bowl-shaped opening cut into a block of stone or wood. A pointer in the center cast shadows inside the bowl. Muslims later invented the modern sundial—the type with the angl...

Overview
Think about all the times each day you use clean water, the day to day- you may not even realize. Clean drinking water washing the dishes, cleaning dirty clothes, taking a shower, boiling water for a pasta dinner. Now imagine your day without clean water. What would you drink? How would you cook? How would you bathe?

Did you know, you can harness the sun’s renewable energy to purify contaminated water? With the sun’s heat and the help of the water cycle, we can take dirt...

By Cathie Ericson

If you’re of, ahem, a certain age, you probably remember the days of “lying out” in the backyard covered in baby oil—maybe even lying on foil—all in pursuit of that coveted, bronze tan. Now, older and wiser, we’re still slathering ourselves up, but it’s with SPF 50. So how do you transform your hard-gained wisdom into some sun safety rules for teens?

Like our former selves, many teens will go to unsafe lengths to pursue a tan, from venturing out sans su...

Childhood and adolescence are critical periods in which exposure to UV radiation is more likely to lead to skin cancer later in life. When the UV is 3 or higher, sun protection remains important including throughout the teenage years.

UV radiation can’t be seen or felt which is why it is easy to be caught out. It’s not like the sun’s light or heat which we can see or feel. This makes the sun protection message challenging for teens as it’s not always obvious when sun protection i...

Sunface is a free facial aging app that lets you take a selfie and see what your skin will look like in the future based on your level of UV exposure.

By Susan Rinkunas



I get it, putting on sunscreen can feel like a chore. Despite the possibility of developing skin cancer from UV exposure, some people just can’t be bothered to use it on a daily basis, or even re-apply at the beach. But sun exposure doesn’t just increase cancer risk, it also leads to premature skin ag...

Gery P. Guy Jr, PhD, MPH1; Dawn M. Holman, MPH1; Meg Watson, MPH1

JAMA Dermatol. 2016;152(10):1083-1084. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2016.3453

Sun exposure in childhood is an important risk factor for the future development of skin cancer. The risk of developing melanoma is strongly related to a history of sunburns (an indicator of intense UV radiation exposure) during childhood and adolescence.1 However, skin cancer risk can be greatly reduced if children and adolescents are...

The Times of Israel – A research team, headed by Dr. Assaf Zaritsky, from BGU’s Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, has developed a new method, based on artificial intelligence, aimed at identifying melanoma cells that are likely to metastasize. Read more here: https://aabgu.org/ai-melanoma/