This month Rhode Island Hospital dermatologist Martin Weinstock MD PhD received a $1 million 2 year Team Science grant from the Melanoma Research Alliance. Dr. Weinstock received this grant to serve as principal investigator in developing a training program for primary care physicians to improve melanoma screening in primary care. Your primary care doctor is always going to be the doctor you see most often and by improving their screening abilities, they can serve as a good first line of defense for patients.
The goal of the program is to eventually develop a web based training module that will lead to earlier detection of melanoma. Dr. Weinstock theorizes that this could ultimately result in cutting the number of melanoma deaths in half. By establishing a web based module for the training program, doctors all over the world will be able to benefit and learn from the experts.
Weinstock, who is also a professor of dermatology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, says, “Conventional education programs have stabilized mortality rates, however, an increasing body of evidence indicates that effective early detection is our best hope for cutting melanoma deaths by at least half in the near future.” He continues, “We need to change our methods to get a substantial reduction in deaths.”
Melanoma is a serious problem in the United States, and all over the world. According to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 68,720 new melanoma cases will be diagnosed in the United States this year. While melanoma accounts for only 5 percent of skin cancer cases, its high mortality rate accounts for almost 80 percent of skin cancer deaths.
He notes that knowledge and skills for melanoma screening remain low in the primary care area and performance of thorough skin self-examinations also remains low. The grant from the Melanoma Research Alliance will allow Weinstock and other researchers to develop a new training program that will target these issues. He says, “Through this grant, we are now able to develop an early detection training program that is web-based for widespread use and grounded in the realities of primary care delivery. We believe the program we are developing will allow a quantum leap in interactivity compared to prior efforts in melanoma screening.”
Early detection is the key when it comes to melanoma. If caught early enough the disease is very treatable. Since your primary doctor is going to be the first one you go to see, this is the area where the knowledge can be best put to use. That time between the patient seeing their primary doctor and going to see a specialist for diagnosis, is wasted time when the disease is making its deadly advance.
I think this is excellent news and a very effective strategic plan of attack. Are greatest weapon in the war against disease is knowledge. Our experts can be best served by taking what they’ve learned and passing it on to others. Its just not possible for every patient that needs it to go and visit one of the experts in the field. So by raising the knowledge and awareness of others in the medical profession, these experts are really put to their best use.
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