Melanoma Fund

24/09/2026

Greetings from Baltimore 🇺🇸

We are here for the 2026 Global Melanoma Coalition meeting, hosted by the Melanoma Research Foundation - who are bringing together organisations from around the world with one shared ambition: reducing the impact of melanoma.

Our CEO Michelle Baker will be presenting Sunguarding® and sharing what we’re learning about a question that increasingly sits at the heart of our work:

Who is responsible for sun protection?

From teaching children the skills to protect themselves, to helping organisations recognise their own duty of care, we need to move beyond awareness and start changing the environments and behaviours that shape everyday decisions.

We’re also looking forward to sharing our proposal for a global study into sun-protection behaviour — exploring what actually drives, and prevents, protective behaviour across different countries and cultures.

Lots to discuss. And, hopefully, plenty to bring home and put into action.

16/09/2026

From New Zealand to Wales, this is what collaboration can look like.

Great to see Sunguarding® Anglesey featured by the Welsh Government - including this short film showing the initiative in action.

What makes this particularly interesting to me is how it came together. Research by nursing students at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand identified the need for visible, community-led action around UV protection.

That connected with our Sunguarding® approach and, working with Cyngor Sir Ynys Môn was translated into action at Trearddur Bay.

Our UV Safety Station now provides free sunscreen alongside visible and virtual sun-protection messaging, with beach wardens inspiring action by leading by example, taking prevention to the place where the behaviour needs to happen.

There is plenty for us to learn as the model develops, but the bigger opportunity is exciting: global learning translated into local action. With the right partnerships, approaches like this have the potential to travel far beyond one beach, one community, or one country.

Very timely as our CEO Michelle Baker prepares to join colleagues from around the world at the Global Melanoma Coalition meeting in Baltimore next week.

Home/Anglesey Sunguarding®Anglesey Sunguarding®Anglesey Sunguarding® initiative aims to improve sun safety awareness amid rising skin cancer rates in Wales.Over the summer Anglesey County Council ↗ in partnership with the Melanoma Fund ↗ and Otago Polytechnic ↗ have piloted a public health ...

10/09/2026

☀️Putting Sunguarding® to the test with The Scouts ☀️

Delighted to work with The Scouts again this week, hosting a webinar with national Scout Safety Leads. We're inviting them to complete our Sunguarding® Course and tell us what they really think.

Does it change how they think about UV and heat risk?
Could it change practice?
And what could get in the way?

Their professional insight will help us understand how sun and heat protection can become part of everyday safety within Scouting – and how we can shift behaviour and culture to help grow melanoma out of the next generation.

If your organisation wants to move beyond sun-safety awareness and create real behaviour change, take a look at our Sunguarding® resources or contact Michelle Baker - our CEO - for a chat.

www.melanoma-fund.co.uk

08/09/2026

We know the risks. So why aren't we changing our behaviour?

New research from Cancer Research UK provides another important insight into the UK's relationship with UV protection.

Of 4,200 UK adults surveyed:
☀️ 43% reported being sunburnt in the previous 12 months
☀️ 73% didn't know the UV level at which sun protection is
recommended
☀️ Only 40% said they used sunscreen most or every time they
were outside in the sun in the UK

These findings reinforce something we see repeatedly through our work: Awareness alone isn't enough.

We need to understand the gap between what people know and what they actually do.
What drives our behaviour?
What gets in the way of protection?
And, critically, what actually changes it?

This is the thinking behind Sunguarding® – moving beyond awareness to create measurable behaviour change. Important work and important evidence for everyone working in skin cancer prevention.

If your organisation wants to strengthen its approach to sun and heat protection, please get in touch.

04/09/2026

Working together to help shape safer Scouting ☀️

Sun and heat are part of outdoor Scouting - but protection needs to work in practice.

Through Sunguarding®, the Melanoma Fund is working with The Scouts to understand what works, what gets in the way and what could be done better

At Gilwell Reunion, volunteers will be sharing their experiences through our Sun Safety Review, helping shape practical support for better sun and heat protection across Scouting.

Sponsored by Delph Suncare, who is providing SPF30 sunscreen at the event for all completing the review to help remove barriers to protection.

03/09/2026

Let's help shape safer Scouting ☀️

This weekend, I’ll be at Gilwell Reunion, working with The Scouts to answer an important question: How are sun and heat really managed across Scouting – and what gets in the way of doing it better?

Our Sun Safety Review will explore the behaviours and barriers behind protection, helping us develop practical ways to better support young people and volunteers outdoors.

Our attendance is sponsored by Delph - supplying SPF30 sunscreen to all those completing the review, alongside our UV-reactive Sunguard® wristbands.

We created Sunguarding® because protecting people takes more than telling them what to do. It means understanding why they don’t – and changing that.

At this weekend? Find us in the Adventure Zone, complete the review and help shape safer Scouting.

22/08/2026

Melanoma Fund Trustee Dr Hugo De La Peña, MD, PHD, FRCP. joined the BBC this week to discuss encouraging Phase III results from a personalised mRNA-based treatment for people with high-risk melanoma.

Used alongside immunotherapy following surgery, the treatment could help reduce the risk of melanoma returning or spreading.

It’s an exciting development in personalised cancer treatment, while reinforcing an important distinction: this is a treatment for melanoma, not a vaccine to prevent it.

🎧 Hear Hugo explain what the findings could mean for patients on BBC Sounds (first item)



https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0030c89?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

The melanoma vaccine is the first to have positive late stage trial results

21/07/2026

Another important step forward for protecting children outdoors.

We're delighted that the Department for Education's HAF Weekly Newsletter has again highlighted our Sunguarding® resources to help providers manage UV risk during summer holiday activities.

Thousands of children spend long hours outdoors during the school holidays, yet UV remains one of the few environmental risks that is invisible and often overlooked.

It's encouraging to see practical prevention becoming part of the conversation.

The newsletter signposts providers to our:
☀️ Free Sunguarding® Course
☀️ UV Safety Stations
☀️ Outdoor Kids Sun Safety Code

Awareness alone doesn't prevent skin cancer. Systems that make protection easy and routine do. Thank you to everyone helping embed better sun and heat protection for children across England.

21/07/2026

UV is a workplace hazard. It's time we treated it like one.

Pleased to contribute to this week's Construction News feature exploring how the construction industry is tackling melanoma and skin cancer.

Real progress comes when we move beyond awareness and make sun protection part of everyday health and safety.

Thank you to Construction News for shining a light on such an important issue.

It might be the most dangerous form of skin cancer, but Shane McCormick barely knew a thing about melanoma when he contracted it in 2017 following years