About Cancer Prevention

Did you know that a healthy lifestyle can reduce your risk for cancer?

About prevention

What you eat, whether you smoke, your level of physical activity, and how much you protect yourself from the sun are all lifestyle choices that can affect your chances of getting cancer, and your chances of preventing it. Alcohol consumption also plays a part in some cancers.

There are some environmental factors which are a risk, depending on the length of time and amount of your exposure. Radon is an example of this in British Columbia and air pollution sometimes, but only where and when officials let you know it is a concern.

Knowing more about cancer risk factors and prevention is important for everyone. But it is also important for cancer survivors because of the possible risk for developing a second primary cancer (a new cancer that is not related to the original one). In fact, if second primary cancers were taken as a group, they would be the sixth most common cancer.

Please see the menu to the right for more information on each of these factors.

How healthy are you?

Assessing your health and potential cancer risk factors can help you make decisions to keep you well. Try our printable quiz and goal sheet.

You can also protect yourself through BC Cancer's screening programs, which can detect breast, cervix and colon cancer at early stages.

Our team

BC Cancer’s Prevention Program has Cancer Prevention Specialists (CP Specialists) who build partnerships and collaborate on public health initiatives, supporting awareness and action in British Columbia regarding lifestyle factors for cancer prevention.

Please contact 604-877-6227 for further information.

Breann Corcoran

Breann is a skilled population health professional with over 15 years experience in the health field. She holds a Master's degree in Population Health and a Certificate in Program Management from UBC. In addition to her work with BC Cancer, Breann has worked with Vancouver Coastal Health in community engagement and community development roles. Teaching has always been an interest for Breann and she has previously taught a public health course to graduate students. Breann is passionate about prevention and enjoys collaborating with health, government, academic and community partners to make a difference.

Halla Elmobayad

Halla completed her Masters degree in Health Administration at UBC and has 15+ years experience in organizational strategy and program development in the BC healthcare system. Her Masters thesis investigated childhood screening for dysfunction and disease, which led her to focus her career on disease prevention. For 5 years Halla was the Strategic Director at the Vancouver Division of Family Practice, which allowed her to work closely with the Ministry of Health, General Practice Services Committee and Doctors of BC, to improve the patient and doctor experience in BC's healthcare system. Her portfolio included community development to streamline patient access to physician care, health literature and hospital services, to improve overall population health. Most recently, she is focussing on the integration of knowledge translation and health literacy into disease prevention program development at BC Cancer.

Cheryl Colby

Cheryl Colby has been a Cancer Prevention Specialist for the past 10 years and most recently has added Program Manager for the BC Cancer Smoking Cessation Program to her portfolio. Cheryl holds a Bachelor of Human Kinetics degree from UBC and has been a health and fitness professional for over 25 years. She previously served as the Director of Personal Training at Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club as well as Jericho Tennis Club, and continues to work part time as a personal trainer with private clients. Cheryl enjoys collaborating with others to find solutions to preventing disease and embracing healthy lifestyles. With her passion for health and people, she delivers a positive, energetic approach to her work.

Our resources

Our Cancer Prevention Specialists build partnerships and collaborate on public health initiatives, supporting awareness and action in British Columbia regarding lifestyle factors for cancer prevention.

Collaborations

BC Sun Safety Coalition

About

Sun Safe BC is a provincial coalition with members involved in sun safety and skin cancer prevention work. Coordinated and administered by BC Cancer Prevention Program, the coalition works collaboratively to reduce the risk of exposure to UV and its damaging effects. We do this through policy and health protection measures, and by providing health promotion messaging and education to people in BC, with a particular focus on infants, children and youth.

Membership

The following is a list of current coalition member organizations:

Canadian Cancer Society
CAREX Canada
Vancouver Coastal Health
BC Centre for Disease Control
UBC Dermatology
Save Your Skin Foundation
BC Children’s Hospital
BC Cancer
Canadian Dermatology Association

For more information on coalition membership or if you are interested in becoming a member, please contact Breann Corcoran: breann.corcoran at bccancer.bc.ca.

Action Areas

CAPACITY FOR ACTION - Strengthen capacity among priority population service providers and educators
SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENTS - Create and strengthen supportive environments to limit exposure to UV radiation
POLICY & DECISION MAKING – Inform decision making and seek to influence sun safe policies, advancing toward provincial policy creation or amendments when and where possible;
ATTITUDE, KNOWLEDGE & BEHAVIOUR - Influence and improve attitudes, knowledge and behaviour around sun safety and develop individual skills to keep healthy and avoid UV radiation damage.

Current and past projects

Online Training for Early Childhood Educators
Developed and currently hosting zoom workshops for early childhood educators as part of their professional development requirements. Early Childhood Educators can play an important role in protecting children from the sun’s rays.

The course covers important information about skin cancer and ultraviolet radiation, sun protection methods and easy and practical ways to build sun safety into daily routines at childcare centres. We are working to convert the course to an interactive, online platform and are looking to expand course offering to others working directly with children.

Shade Pilot Project
We are working with the City of Vancouver to design and install shade solutions for their high UV exposure childcare facilities. We are currently building a research plan to measure UV exposure and physical activity levels in centres with and without shade sails installed.

Sunscreen Dispenser Project
Members of the coalition have been working to have sunscreen dispensers installed at select park locations during spring/summer months. To date, sunscreen dispensers have been installed at New Westminster’s Riverfront Park and two park locations in Kelowna.

Reports

Annual report 2019/20

Contact

For more information or to connect, please email breann.corcoran at bccancer.bc.ca or call 604-838-7808.

Smoking Cessation Program

The Prevention Program is supporting BC Cancer's Smoking Cessation Program, although it is a clinical initative, as it is a natural fit with our expertise.

The BC Cancer Smoking Cessation Program started in September 2019 in all cancer centres across the province. All new BC Cancer patients are asked about their tobacco use. We can then give patients who smoke the information that they need about the benefits of quitting. This can lead to better results from their cancer treatment.

For further information, please visit the Smoking Cessation Program's webpages.

Programs

Tobacco cessation

The Prevention Program has several tobacco programs and education modules, which can be found at TobaccoEd.org:

Stop Smoking Before Surgery / Treatment: information for patients about the benefits of quitting before surgery or treatment
CTIP (Clinical Tobacco Intervention Program): for healthcare professionals who wish to learn how to assist patients in their quitting attempts, as well as a "generalist" module for individuals who do not work in healthcare
TEAM (Tobacco Education Action Module): for the non-healthcare professional, or any others who wish to assist people with their quit attempts

Camp leaders

Camp organizations can play a key role in minimizing UV exposure, by providing an environment that promotes positive sun protection behaviours. For more information, please read the UV Protection camps brochure.

Pre-school sun awareness

BC Cancer Prevention Program's Sun Safety initiative recognizes those preschool and daycare facilities in BC that have instituted measures to help protect children from harmful exposure to the sun. As a key element of our Sun Safe Program, we issue "Sun Safe Facility" certificates to daycares and preschools that meet essential sun safety requirements.

If your school or daycare wishes to participate in the pre-school / daycare sun awareness certification program, please contact us by e-mail.

For more information, please read the Sun Safe Program fact sheet below.

Some of our sun safety materials for young children can be viewed on our Sun Safety webpage.

For screening programs, see the screening website.

Publications

Cancer prevention

Tobacco

‎Please visit the Smoking Cessation Program webpages.

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Provincial Health Services Authority