Report: More Georgians learn about cancer through campaign

<p>"Every woman deserves to be healthy," poet Maya Angelou says in her smooth voice during a radio ad that encourages mammograms.</p><p>A child dressed as a bee urges people in a TV commercial to get checked for colon cancer.</p><p>Champion cyclist Lance Armstrong appears on a Tour de Georgia ad that says his heroic battle against cancer would have been much easier if he had caught it early.</p><p>Georgia's multimedia campaign to educate residents has been successful, according to a report in Preventing Chronic Disease, a journal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</p><p>Before the statewide campaign began in fall 2002, few Georgians (1.25 per month on average) called a cancer information hot line. After the campaign started, about 300 people a month called the hot line, jumping to 600 calls in January 2003.</p><p>And Georgia was able to do this on the cheap with a $3.1 million budget. About $1.1 million in free public awareness ads that appeared in papers and on TV and on radio also helped.</p><p>The print ads reached about 3 million people. Free radio and TV ads aired more than 745,000 times, the CDC said.</p><p>The campaign "used the power, influence and good will of mass media to serve the greater community interest in social justice, especially the public's health," researchers wrote in the report.</p><p>Health officials wanted to educate people in the state about Georgia's five leading cancers _ breast, cervical, colorectal, prostate and skin cancer.</p><p>They also wanted to increase awareness of how important it is to have proper nutrition, exercise and a healthy lifestyle.</p><p>That's because cancer is so deadly in Georgia _ in 2000, it was the state's second leading cause of death, the cause of 1 in 4 deaths each year.</p><p>The campaign was an effort of business leaders, Gov. Sonny Perdue's office, the Georgia Cancer Coalition and the Georgia Division of Public Health.</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x2865844)</p>