By: Lisa VanRaemdonck, HBHE 2nd year

If one year ago you asked new alum Andrea Layman what she would be doing today, it’s doubtful that you would have heard “Answering questions about the link between breast cancer and food, and teaching children about sun safety.”  But it is her willingness to take on new work and responsibilities with gusto that has propelled her forward in the beginning of her public health career.  Andrea graduated in December 2006 with dual Master’s degrees in Public Health and Social Work.  She had worked with older adults since high school including earning a Bachelor’s degree in Health Administration and Gerontology from Eastern Michigan University and professional experience as the Activities Director at Sunrise Senior Living on Plymouth Road in Ann Arbor.  Andrea’s focus in her social work degree was also with older adults and during grad school she worked in information and referral services with the Greater Michigan chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.  Her career path seemed pretty clear.

However, when she was offered a job as a Community Education Manager at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a new challenge.  As a health educator, Andrea creates and updates cancer education programs and presents them to a huge variety of people including in workplaces, at YMCA sites, in churches, at schools, and other community organizations throughout metro Detroit.  She has provided education on prevention and early-detection in the areas of breast cancer, cervical cancer, sun safety, clinical trials, and smoking prevention and cessation.

One of her first big projects was to revamp Karmanos’ sun safety program called SHIELD (Skin Health Is Easy to Learn and Do).  The program was originally created for parents of preschoolers, but the big question was “Why aren’t we talking directly to young people?”  So, Andrea and her colleagues rewrote the sun safety curriculum, targeting one aspect of the program at elementary school children and the other at middle and high school students.  They pilot tested the materials with various age groups and made changes based on the feedback.  Soon, Andrea found herself standing in front of a group of 8 year-olds rather than a group of 80 year-olds!

It has been pretty busy first year for Andrea and despite a few challenges she enjoys a job that allows her to see positive affects of her work.  “I haven’t walked out of an educational presentation thinking I didn’t bring any new information to the group.”  “Typically there is always something that people didn’t know.  It’s important to bring these issues of cancer prevention and early-detection to the top of people’s minds and help them understand just one more thing they can do to catch cancer earlier and to lower their risk.”  In her own effort of continuing education, and probably an inability to go “cold turkey” with school and classes, Andrea is taking classes to learn to speak Spanish.

What has Andrea learned in this short time?  “One thing I have learned is that when you are doing community education you can’t ever completely know your audience.  Tailoring only works to a certain point.  You have to create an educational program that can be relevant, understood and interesting to a very wide variety of people.  Sometimes you have to be willing to let the script fall away for a while and just talk to people about their concerns and questions about cancer.”

“One of the challenges about this work with cancer education is that information is constantly changing—especially in prevention.  We really have to keep up with the research, but also know what the media is putting out there as well.  At our presentations we get all kinds of questions about the last big news story about cancer and we have to know what parts are based in respectable research and those that are not.”

Andrea’s most recent challenge was accepting a position on the “Cultural Awareness and Understanding” workgroup with the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the international breast cancer organization.  In this position she is working with a team of women from Komen affiliates nationwide to create resources and tools for Komen affiliates to better educate and serve women of all backgrounds, in particular those who are uninsured or are living in poverty.  Because breast cancer can affect all women, their challenging goal is to better ensure that all women have appropriate access to breast health education, screening, and treatment.

Overall, Andrea is happy with her job choice, even though it may not have been an obvious one.  She credits many of her classes at Michigan for giving her the skills to be adaptable and flexible in the range of audiences for whom she plans health education.

Andrea can be contacted at the Karmanos Cancer Institute at (313) 576-8129 or laymana@karmanos.org .