Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness (OHANCA®) Program

Featuring Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week (OHANCAW®), April 13-19, 2020

COVID-19

Thank you for your interest and/or participation in HNCA’s Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness (OHANCA) Program. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, screenings and other group activities are being placed on hold in the Spring and part of the Summer. We encourage sites to reschedule screening events for later in the year, working with your institution’s public health teams to determine the appropriate timing and venue to optimize the safety of the event. If you have received a screening kit already, please be sure to hold on to it until a future date when it is advisable to hold your head and neck cancer screening. If you have a screening already scheduled that you need to cancel or reschedule, please send an email to info@headandneck.org, and we can assist you in removing your screening events from our website. 

We also encourage participants to work digitally to raise awareness of oral, head and neck cancer during Awareness Week (April 13-19). If you’d like to request a package of social media posts, videos, email copy, and newsletter articles for your institution’s use, please email elizabeth@headandneck.org.

The Head and Neck Cancer Alliance is thinking about all those who are affected by COVID-19, especially the cancer patients and survivors that we all serve. 

What We Do

With our OHANCA® Program, we work closely with local hospitals, clinics and medical centers each year to provide free head and neck cancer screenings for community members in hundreds of locations throughout the US and abroad. In 2019, there were 219 screenings hosted in 41 U.S. States and 32 screenings in 17 additional countries.

Why We Do It

The goal of this initiative is to encourage adults who are at high risk for oral, head and neck cancer to take advantage of nationwide and international free screenings. A key message of the campaign is that early diagnosis is key to successful treatment of these types of cancers.

2020 Dates

As in past years, free screenings will occur all over the US and abroad throughout the year. The majority of screenings will take place during Oral, Head and Neck Cancer Awareness Week®, April 13-19, 2020.  This pinnacle week features the highest volume of free screenings all over the world, plus educational talks and other awareness programs. 

How to Get Involved

There are many ways to get involved with OHANCA®. If you are a patient, caregiver, or someone affected by head and neck cancer and are interested in educating others about this disease, please talk to your doctor, a local dental clinic, or medical institution about the importance of early detection. Once you have a medical clinic or institution interested in joining this cause, sign up is easy. For more information on how to host a screening, go to Host a Screening.

If you simply want to find a screening site near you, or participate in head and neck cancer awareness events in your region, please go to Screening Locations. There, you can search for events and screenings in your area.

Other events to support head and neck cancer awareness include:

  • runs/walks
  • survivor workshops
  • basketball/golf/tennis tournaments
  • silent auctions and galas
  • and more…

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Becoming a patient with a serious illness after practicing medicine for over 40 years allowed me to understand the hardship and difficulties that patients face in ways I could not have done before.Itzhak Brook, M.D. Msc.
Physician and Professor of Pediatrics, Georgetown University School of Medicine and Throat Cancer Survivor

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