Melanoma March 2016 is launched

Source: Melbourne Melanoma Institute, February 2016

Melanoma Institute Australia (MIA) officially launched the 2016 ‘Melanoma March’ initiative in Sydney today.

The launch event held at the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth revealed plans for the new project that will receive funds from this year’s Melanoma March campaign. Channel 7’s Dr. Andrew Rochford hosted the event, with MIA"s new CEO Carole Renouf helping to get the campaign off to a flying start. Melanoma patient and author of Dear Melanoma Emma Betts also spoke passionately about the importance of research.

Professor Graham Mann, Research Director at MIA, explained how the Melanoma March campaign provides critical funding for an ambitious new project that will ultimately transform the way patients are treated by shining a research light on melanoma care.

Participating melanoma centres around the country will link databases, for the first time bringing together the key information about the treatment of their patients on a national scale. At present melanoma is only recorded by national cancer registries at the time it is initially diagnosed. Data suitable for research about the patients’ treatment and progress is currently only collected in a few specialist centres. This project seeks to expand this substantially and facilitate the appropriate combination of this invaluable information to provided new insights into treatment responses, especially with the less common forms of melanoma where our aggregated national experience will be so informative.