One Parent's
Huge Impact
Highly motivated mom initiated legislation
benefiting millions of school children
The legacy of Mrs. Karen Graham
On a day at the beach, a friend of Mrs. Graham’s son, Billy, noticed a peculiar mole on Billy’s back. He was only 16 at the time, and sadly it turned out to be melanoma. It was presumed to have been triggered by the one bad sunburn that Billy had sustained as a young child. By age 22 that melanoma took Billy’s life. His mother was of course grief-stricken. But, she later channeled her sorrow into starting a nonprofit foundation dedicated to preventing and curing melanoma. She named it The William S. Graham Foundation for Melanoma (fondly known as The Billy Foundation). Through the foundation, Billy’s mom, Mrs. Karen Graham, deserves credit from the entire country for initiating California’s sun protection legislation for school students. Although it was just one of Mrs. Graham’s many achievements, the passage of that bill marked a first in the nation, and it continues to serve as a skin cancer prevention model for other states to follow.
At the Billy Foundation (no longer active) Mrs. Graham was appalled one day to learn about the situation faced by a school-aged child who had xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare genetic disease that causes extreme vulnerability to sun-induced skin cancer. This child’s school forbid him to wear a sun-protective hat at school even with a doctor’s note. In those days, the dress code at most schools included a prohibition against hats due to a concern that hats might be used to signify gang affiliation. Many teachers also candidly expressed their impression that boys who wear hats are unruly.
Mrs. Graham found a compassionate ally in California state senator, Don Perata. Together, they drafted a bill that gave children the right to wear sun-protective clothing, including a hat, while attending school. Passed in 2001, California’s SB310 became the first statute in the nation to address sun protection in schools.
Because sunscreen is regulated by the FDA as an over-the-counter drug, schools had been refusing to allow, much less encourage, students to use sunscreen under a “No Drugs Policy.” Sun Safety for Kids (SSK) brought this concern to Mrs. Graham, who again earned the support of Sen. Perata to amend SB310 and add language allowing pupils to use sunscreen at school. The result, SB1632, passed in 2002, was incorporated into the California Education Code (Section 35183.5) and stands as model legislation for other states. In memory of Mrs. Graham’s son, the final line of SB1632 reads, “This act shall be known and may be cited as Billy’s Bill for Sun Safety.”
Mrs. Graham did not stop with her legislative success. She worked locally to set up the first SunSafe School District in Pleasanton, CA. All schools in the district followed her foundation’s SunSafe guidelines for hats, sunscreen, outdoor shade, and additions to the curriculum to include teaching about sun safety.
Taking it to the Board
Although SB1632 was passed in 2002, by 2005 it became evident to Sun Safety for Kids that relatively few school districts in California had officially acknowledged it by revising their Board Policy or rescinding their prohibition against hats and sunscreen. David Buller, PhD, at Klein Buendel in Colorado, was keenly interested in this predicament and he secured a grant from the National Cancer institute at the NIH to study the adoption of sun safety policy by school districts in California and Colorado. The project was named Sun Safe Schools, and SSK was invited by Dr. Buller to join the study team.
One of our first tasks was to draft a comprehensive sample policy and petition school districts to adopt it. Unfortunately, in the eyes of most school board members that we initially approached, we did not have proper credentials to be making school policy so we did not achieve much initial success. We then took our draft to the California School Boards Association (CSBA) to seek their endorsement. CSBA saw room for improvement and directed their attorneys to collaborate with SSK in creating the novel CSBA Sample Board Policy that they then disseminated to all their school district members. To explain and promote the Sample Policy, CSBA published an excellent and thorough advisory in their Policy Briefs (July, 2006).
The California branch of the Sun Safe Schools research team was then able to attend school board meetings to (a) remind them of the existing California legislation on sun protection, and (b) plead for their adoption of CSBA’s Sample Policy on Sun Safety. Not every district took action prior to the end of our study, yet many districts did adopt an unrevised version of the CSBA Sample Policy and incorporated it into their Policy Manual as item BP5141.7. Additional school districts adopted the policy after the close of our study.
