Jun 13, 2024 12:30 PM
Rtn. Steve Fine (via ZOOM 12.30pm)
Melanoma (click blue line)

The nonprofit Melanoma Education Foundation began conducting free presentations on early self-detection of melanoma to Rotary clubs in June, 2022 and, since then, has conducted 219 30-minute Zoom presentations. The American Cancer Society predicts nearly 190,000 new cases in 2023; melanoma can strike anyone from preteen to elderly and is often fatal but, when found early, is permanently curable in a short outpatient visit without any need for follow-up chemo or radiation.

Steve Fine, founder and president of the Melanoma Education Foundation, attended colleges in the Boston area, receiving a doctorate in chemistry from Northeastern University. He then moved to Pennsylvania, completing a year of postdoctoral research at Lehigh University. After 5 years as assistant professor of organic chemistry at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, he moved back to New England where he served in technical and management positions in high tech chemical companies.

In 1989 he started a consulting practice in the technology of high purity chemical manufacturing, concurrently serving for 3 years as Vice President of Technology for ACSI, a West Coast manufacturer of semiconductor chemicals.

Shortly after his son, Dan, died of melanoma in 1998 at the age of 26, he founded the non-profit Melanoma Education Foundation and, since 2000, has devoted full time to the Foundation.

The primary activity of the Foundation has been educating high school and middle school wellness teachers about melanoma and providing them with free online lessons to educate their students about self-detecting melanoma while it is curable. Prior to the Covid 19 pandemic over 1700 schools in all 50 U.S. states and Canada were using the lessons, resulting in saved lives of students, teachers and their loved ones.