Sheryl Tynan Nichols speaks about the Council on Cancer during a recent meeting of the Kiwanis Club. Photo by Don Casperson
By CHARMIAN SCHALLER
Los Alamos Kiwanis Club
Sheryl Tynan Nichols, vice president of the Los Alamos Council on Cancer, told Kiwanis in a recent talk, “Information is our No. 1 goal.”
“The Los Alamos Council on Cancer was formed by a group of doctors in the 1940s,” she said, and it now includes two doctors and several other volunteers.
The non-profit organization sponsors two events per year. This year, on Sept. 26, it also participated in the annual Los Alamos Health Fair, doing free skin screening and making referrals as necessary.
On Tuesday (Oct. 20) at the First Baptist Church (2200 Diamond Drive) in Los Alamos, Dr. Rebecca J. Hammon will give one of the council’s informational presentations, providing an “Introduction to Head and Neck Cancer.”
Registration for the casual dinner preceding the talk has closed, but interested persons may still go to the free talk itself, which starts at 6 p.m. and will end at about 7:30 p.m. after a question and answer session.
Nichols said that Dr. Hammon, now of the Harvard/Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, actually grew up in Los Alamos.
Nichols also noted that head and neck cancer are “becoming more and more prevalent.”
A flyer on Dr. Hammon’s “seminar objectives” said the talk will: cover how to “recognize the most common presentations of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma”; “explain the role of human papillomavirus infection in the increasing incidence of oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma in the United States”; and “review the use of multimodality therapy in the treatment of advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.”
Nurses and other health professionals who attend the talk will be awarded 1.5 continuing education contact hours.
Nichols, who spoke at Kiwanis as part of an effort to attract more people to the council’s presentations, is a Los Alamos native. She spent 24 years working for the Los Alamos County Clerk’s Office, retiring in August 2014. She joined the Los Alamos Council on Cancer in June 2014. The council welcomes volunteers and needs them, she said.
