Help Educate Your Middle School Age Children about the Sun with a Free UV Photograph

It’s that time of year again when kids get outside to enjoy their summer vacations and parents are faced with the challenge of trying to get them to wear sunscreen. Well, now there may be help to win the battle of sun education and skin protection with our children.

As reported in HealthDay, the Journal of Dermatology Nurses’ Association studied the impact of lecturing 111 middle school children (ages 11-13) on sun protection. In addition to the lecture, they provided 83 of those children with an ultraviolet photograph of their face revealing and explaining their present sun damage. The other 28 children attended the lecture, but did not receive a photograph. After six months, 51 percent of the group who received a photograph reported having had a sunburn, compared to 64 percent in the group with no photograph taken. While these sunburn rates are still way too high, it is important to note that the students with the most facial freckles (and thus at greater risk for skin cancer) were very impacted by their photo and were significantly less likely to report a burn.

If you have middle school age sons or daughters and would like an ultraviolet photograph taken of them to help explain the risks of sun damage, please call our office. We have the Reveal photography system and will gladly take a photo free of charge. It is my hope that these photos will educate children about the sun and encourage them to prevent sunburns for healthy skin now and in the future!

Tags: children, skin protection, sun damage, sun education, sunburn, sunscreen, ultraviolet, uv photograph

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 10:47 am and is filed under Skin Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.