Teacher Parent Synergy

Colorado isn’t sweltering the way the eastern U.S. is this summer but, in the long run, the state’s elevation actually makes the sun more dangerous here.

A 2004 survey found almost half of white adults in Colorado had at least one sunburn in the past year, and sunburns are a significant risk factor for skin cancer. Diagnoses of melanoma, responsible for 75 percent of skin cancer deaths, are 15 percent higher in Colorado than in the rest of the country.

That’s why a number of Colorado schools and school districts – aided by state and local health departments – are beginning to adopt sun safety policies and be more intentional about introducing sun protection information into classrooms.

Just this spring, Tri-County Health Department distributed “sun safe tool kits” to all 15 school districts in Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas counties, in hopes the districts will adopt some of the suggested sun safety strategies.

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“We can’t really say how it’s going yet because we just distributed them,” said Stacy Weinberg, director of epidemiology, planning and communication for Tri-County.

“Our plan is to evaluate it next spring, but our goal is to disseminate the various strategies the superintendents deem appropriate, and look at strategies that can focus on policy change or systems change to increase sun safety.”

Included in the tool kit:

Researchers from Klein Buendel, which launched the Sun Safe Colorado program five years ago with a grant from the Colorado Department of Health, recently partnered with the National Cancer Institute to study what it takes to get schools to adopt sun safe policies.

Targeted in the study were 112 districts in Colorado and in California.

Findings of the study won’t be made public until they are published later this year in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. But some differences between the two states became clear, said Ilima Kane, program manager of Klein Buendel.

“I can tell you, anecdotally, that Colorado is much more a local control state than California is,” Kane said.

“In California, policy comes from the top down. If the state says something is a good idea, most districts will adopt it much more easily than in Colorado. Here, the attitudes around state policy are quite different.”

But even without state sun safety policies to guide them, many Colorado schools and school districts are far ahead of the game compared to schools nationwide, Kane said.

“We’re doing well with schools,” she said. “Probably only six or seven states in the nation are really targeting sun safety, and Colorado is one of those. Unfortunately, we also have some of the fastest-increasing skin cancer rates in the country, due to the elevation, the number of sunny days and the Colorado outdoor lifestyle.”

Rural schools districts have been especially receptive to adopting sun safety procedures.

“It’s a big issue among our farmer populations,” she said.

Around the state, different districts and individual schools are taking a variety of steps to address sun safety. Among them:

“I don’t think you’ll see a super lot of schools adding sun safety to their health curriculum,” Kane said. “But sun safety education can really be contextual. You’ll see more and more doing something before big field days or as part of a PE class. It will be in places where students can immediately put what they learn into practice.”

Still, encouraging students to wear sunscreen is not without problems, educators acknowledge.

In some districts, sunscreen is considered an over-the-counter medication and must be accompanied by a doctor’s note and must be administered by the appropriate school personnel. In some classrooms, certain sunscreens irritate allergic students.

And teachers of young students are sometimes discouraged from helping them to apply sunscreen.

“It’s a touching issue,” Kane said. “I can understand that. It can be tricky. But things are much less restrictive now than they were six or seven years ago.”

Equally troubling is the fear that too many warnings about the dangers of sun exposure will discourage children from playing outside. No one wants that to happen.

“From a wellness perspective, we’re always trying to strike a balance between making sure kids get outside to play and not getting too much sun,” said Wikstrom. “We know our population of students really needs to be active. And getting some amount of sun is important for good health.”

Colorado currently has no state laws that address sun safety for children, but Kane said the Sun Safe Colorado campaign hopes to work with legislators to introduce a bill to restrict tanning salon use to adults only.

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Tags: Sun, Sun Safety

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