Program aims to spread the word on cancer

BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN

Claire Cressey-Forsyth of the Canadian Cancer Society says she has the ultimate weapon in the battle against cancer – word of mouth.

The woman is in charge of a pilot program in northeastern Ontario called the Lay Health Educator Project.

The idea is to recruit about 30 local women willing to encourage their family, friends and co-workers to go for mammography breast exams and pap tests. These tests screen for breast and cervical cancer.

The West End of Sudbury – which includes Gatchell, the Donovan, Flour Mill and Minnow Lake – has been chosen as one of the areas in the northeast where the project will be tested.

She hopes to hire someone to run the project in the Sudbury area early in 2007 and start training volunteers by May.

People can learn more about the project at three upcoming meetings. A light meal will be served at all three events.

The first meeting will be held Dec. 4 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm at Branch 76 of the Royal Canadian Legion on Weller St.

The second meeting will be held Dec. 6 at the Marguerite Lougheed Centre on Albert St. from 5:30 to 7:30 pm. Another meeting will be held Dec. 7 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm at the Ukrainian Federation Hall on Frood Rd.

“The primary way the volunteers will participate in the project is just in their daily lives, connecting with women,” says Cressey-Forsyth.

“If you can picture someone who works at the Taxation Data Centre with a whole lot of women around her, and is having lunch there and has good connections with the women she's sitting there, she just has to talk it up. She just has to ask the question about mammographies and pap tests.”

A similar project was tested in the United States a few years ago, and was extremely successful, she says.

Cressey-Forsyth says she's learned a lot about cancer screening over the past few months, and recently encouraged a co-worker to get tested.

“I asked her, 'So when was the last time you had a pap test?' She said, 'It's been five years at least,'” she says

“At that point, if I were a lay health educator, I would have said, 'Well, you know there is a really important reason why you should be having screenings. They can detect cancer early and you can be saved'.”

All sexually active women should have pap tests and all women between the ages of 50 and 74 should have mammographies, says Cressey-Forsyth. She figures some women are too embarrassed and modest to have these procedures done.

“We know that breast and cervical screening stands at about 50 percent of the population, and that's really not enough,” she says. “We want to increase it considerably.”

The Canadian Cancer Society has set a goal of having 90 percent of women between the ages of 50 and 74 go for regular breast exams by 2020, and 95 percent of sexually active women go for pap tests.

For more information, contact Cressey-Forsyth at 670-1234, ext. 232 or [email protected].