SPOHNC has been on our resources list for four years. We have members that love the face to face support groups there, and some that have found them lacking. Nevertheless, every organization that helps get the word out and supports those with the disease deserves to be seen in my opinion. I am less in favor of subscription or paid information, newsletters, etc. and OCF has strived to put everything we have out there for free. Of course that makes our financial situation tenuous from month to month, but I refuse to sell information to those who need it. It is a philosophical difference between OCF and some other organizations. As to the ribbons, we chose not to go there, since there are so many different colored ribbons out there, that except for pink (breast cancer) and red (aids) no one who looks at the over 5 thousand registered colors and designs, knows what they are looking at. (the ribbon from SPOHNC and UK are two different colors and designs, as is the one from a few head and neck cancer organizations.) I find it frustrating that some organizations insist on going their own way, in lieu of working together for a real cohesive national effort, and they do this because there is a fear that a potential financial sponsor might choose one over another, or that a visitor to the site might donate to someone else if they let them know the other site is out there. Take a look at spohnc's resources list and see if you can find OCF on it....(you won't). If you want to support the UK group, send money instead of buying ribbons, since they, like us, need it. Dr Vinod K Joshi who runs it is someone that I consider a personal friend. Like me, he is essentially working alone, but as a doctor has some connections to pharma companies that I just don't have. SPOHNC has plenty of corporate sponsors and paying newsletter subscribers, so they fall into a different league than us.

We are in the process of writing with a new corporate sponsor just for this idea, waiting room brochures to put in dentists offices. So that is a project we hope to have finished by years end, if they provide the printing money in time. There is a national US effort to do oral cancer screenings and get publicity for it. All the upcoming dates for the next five years are on the events link on the web site. We will be doing this in conjunction with the Oral Cancer Consortium (22 institutions so far and growing) on the east coast (started by my friend Dean Mike Alfano of NYU) and are enrolling dental schools around the country to get on board with us to make that THE national date everyone uses to bring media attention to the disease at a national level. A huge group of organizations all doing it on one day gets the attention more than isolated screenings here and there. But the local impact of screenings cannot be over emphasized. I just hope that they ALSO choose to do one on the national day.