Cancer Council SA chief executive Kerry Rowlands has a simple message for people who are worried about changes in their body’s appearance or its functions.

“Know yourself and trust yourself – and if something doesn’t seem quite right for you, then push pretty hard for something to be done,” said Rowlands, who had her own brush with cancer two years ago.

Ahead of Cancer Council SA’s Biggest High Tea on May 10, she is keen to raise awareness around cancer screening, prevention and research and the organisation’s role in them.

Every day, 30 people are diagnosed with cancer in South Australia; many of these cases are revealed by Australia’s national breast, bowel and cervical cancer screening programs that aim to pick up the disease in its early stages.

This will be expanded to include a new national lung cancer screening program, announced last May and set to launch in July next year.

It will potentially prevent 500 deaths annually – particularly among First Nations people, rural and remote dwellers, those with mental health conditions and other vulnerable groups.

“Population screening saves so many lives and we’re so fortunate to have such advanced screening programmes here in Australia,” Rowlands said.

“But we all need to take responsibility as well and know ourselves.”

She spoke from experience. In 2022, she insisted on having a dark coloured “freckle” removed from her leg.

The spot had appeared 12 months earlier and, although subsequent visual skin checks at the GP and skin specialist showed it lacked the typical characteristics of a melanoma, she remained concerned by it.

“I remember sitting in my office one day and I just couldn’t stop looking at it,” she said.

“It was a really weird sensation, like it was tingling, and I thought to myself, I’m just not happy with that.

“I went back to the skin specialist and said to him, I just want you to remove it.”

To reassure Rowlands, the specialist sent the extracted tissue for pathology testing.

When he phoned to say that testing revealed it was a melanoma, he reportedly apologised for being dismissive of Rowland’s concerns and said it was a ‘wakeup call’ for him regarding melanoma diagnosis.

She said she would “hate for the message to come across that screening isn’t effective” as it is, but “you know your body best – don’t be afraid to ask questions if something doesn’t feel right”.

Cancer Council SA’s Biggest High Tea is the local organisation’s first ticketed fundraiser and Rowlands hoped the corporate sector will attend in droves.

“I’m sure that many of the corporates have people in their business who are impacted by cancer,” she said.

“So, this is a way to show to their staff that element of support for everybody who’s impacted by cancer.”

Walkley-winning journalist, author and cancer survivor Julia Baird will be the keynote speaker.

Her best-selling book Phosphorescence: On Awe, Wonder and Things That Sustain You When the World Goes Dark won multiple awards after its release in March 2020.

Nationally, the Cancer Council has raised more than $200 million over three decades via Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea, which sees communities and individuals host their own events.

In SA, Rowlands looks to raise $1.3 million this year.

The funds will go toward prevention programs, medical research and providing services for cancer patients.

A recent report prepared for government by Cancer Council Victoria found that more than 8 per cent of Australian secondary school students surveyed had smoked cigarettes in the previous year and, alarmingly, more than 15 per cent of all students had vaped in the preceding month.

“Cancer Council SA is also working in that space where these vaping kids are addicted to nicotine,” Rowlands said.

She pointed out that once anti-vaping laws take effect, there will be “heaps” of teenagers having nicotine withdrawals, and that would potentially impact student behaviour.

Also, one in three people who vape will go onto smoke cigarettes.

Getting on the front foot, Cancer Council SA’s prevention area is doing ‘hackathons’ with students, teachers, educators and people from Aboriginal communities to identify and develop different tools to support them to quit, as young people are less likely to call the Quitline.

The Behaviour Research Unit recently researched junk food advertising and its proximity to schools and found that around 80 per cent of it is within 800 metres of schools.

Rowlands said the organisation is lobbying government on the issue, because of the implications for early onset bowel cancer and childhood obesity, as the data “tells us that children are being targeted”.

The organisation also funds around $2 million each year in clinical research.

Targeted therapies that kill the cancer cells, but not the healthy cells, are one area of interest, particularly as cancer treatments can deliver “a lifetime of side effects” to childhood and other cancer survivors.

Additionally, Cancer Council SA provides multiple support services for people experiencing or impacted by cancer, including free accommodation for regional and remote cancer patients at its new Greenhill Road facility.

Rowlands said that the number of people being diagnosed each day with cancer used to be 31 and that small decrease to 30 was “promising”.

She looks forward to Cancer Council SA’s Biggest High Tea on May 10 and seeing the funds raised further move the number down.

Purchase individual tickets or a table of 10 here.