Students: Mouth Cancer Awareness Month

Harriet Beaty
Newcastle Dental School

It’s Mouth Cancer Awareness Month, and we are discussing campaigns held across the country’s dental schools to raise awareness of its signs, symptoms and causes.

In the UK, more than 6,800 people are diagnosed with oral cancer,¹ with one-third succumbing to the disease.² Alarmingly, cases of oral cancer in the UK are greater than testicular and cervical cancer combined.³

With its prevalence rising, it is particularly important that dental schools continue to educate students on the clinical signs and symptoms of oral cancer to aid in early diagnosis and therefore increase survival rates.

It is also crucial to raise the public and professional awareness of risk factors associated with cancer.

Clinical students are often part of the front line fighting against this disease. By working alongside senior colleagues in dental hospitals, and treating patients who may not regularly visit a dentist, we can help educate, diagnose and hopefully prevent patients from this disease and utilise these skills for the rest of our practising careers.

References
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/mouth-cancer/
https://www.dentalhealth.org/mouth-cancer
https://dentistry.dundee.ac.uk/mouth-cancer-300-0

John Gorman
Dundee Dental School

At the University of Dundee, the focus during Mouth Cancer Awareness Month is on delivering education to students and the general public in the most engaging way possible.

A yearly acoustic night is organised to raise money and bring attention to the risks of oral cancer. Last year, £674 was raised at this event for the charity ‘Let’s Talk About Mouth Cancer’ and the crowd was educated on the risk factors of oral cancer.

Dental students also run a mouth cancer awareness stall outside the student union that educates the general public on oral cancer—with a focus on alcohol as a risk factor, which is not commonly recognised by the general public.

This stall is sponsored by Colgate and an eye-catching stop-smoking mascot is present every year. Questionnaires gathered at this stall go toward post-graduate research at the dental school studying alcohol as a risk factor for oral cancer.

The charity ‘Let’s Talk About Mouth Cancer’ is heavily involved with the Dundee Dental School and takes final-year dental students into the community to homeless shelters to teach care workers how to spot cancer in the mouths of their residents.

Beth Bradley
Leeds Dental School

Mouth Cancer Awareness, as you know, is a crucial aspect of helping to prevent and detect oral cancer. Educating patients with the BDA’s advice—‘If you notice changes in your mouth, get it checked out!’—is an important aspect of patient care at Leeds Dental Institute.

At Leeds we appreciate that as dental students we are often the front line for oral cancer education and detection.

We strive to inform patients of the lifestyle risks that can lead to oral cancers and we promote ‘mouth cancer awareness’ wherever we can.

Every year during November, Mouth Cancer Awareness Month, we reach out to our student community by setting up a stall at our Students Union.

We promote oral and general health with the aim being to educate students on what oral cancer really is. We help explain possible risk factors for oral cancer, many of which students are all too familiar with.

We provide alcohol consumption education and signpost smoking cessation support, whilst also selling cookies and cakes. (Our anti-sugar campaigning can wait until another day.)

Whilst running the stall, we fundraise for the Ben Walton Trust, which commemorates the yearlong battle with oral cancer that Ben Walton fought at the young age of 22. Every year our aim is the same: to reach out and educate as many staff and students as possible to make sure everybody is Mouth Aware!