Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I'm Joshua Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement,

and a former health commissioner here in Baltimore.

Our goal is to bring evidence and experience to illuminate critical public health issues.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhh.edu.

That's public health question at jh.u.edu for future podcast episodes.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Smith-Rogers, producer of public health on call.

Today, we prepare for summer.

Dr. Josh Jarfstein speaks to Dr. Sancy Leachman, the chair of dermatology at the Oregon

Health and Science University.

Their topic is skin cancer and specifically the war on melanoma. Let's listen.

Dr. Sancy Leachman, thank you so much for coming to talk to me now just as the weather is getting

warmer. How are you doing? I'm doing well, Josh. Thanks for having me. We get a lot of different materials sent us about the podcast, but we got something about

the war on melanoma. And that led me to call you. So can you tell me, first of all, what is

melanoma? Let's just get that clear for everybody listening. And then why a war on melanoma? Right. Well, melanoma is the most

risky, lethal skin cancer that we have. It's fairly common. And it's very aggressive. It metastasizes

and kills people at a very early stage, less than a millimeter thick sometimes.

And that's one of the reasons it's so important to catch it early.

Because if you catch it early, melanoma is the kind of cancer that you can just cut it out and you'll be done with it and you can move on with your life without any interruption,

no decrease quality of life.

But if you catch it late, after it's already started to

metastasize, it's very, very difficult to treat. And mortality is about 50% no matter what we throw at it.

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