Breakthrough information is also provided to both the public and medical professionals to facilitate disease awareness, early discovery, and improve the quality and outcome of oral cancer treatment.
It is engaged in advocacy related to these issues at the governmental level at the CDC, National Institutes of Health, FDA, and within the legislative branch itself.
The late stage discovery, after twice being misdiagnosed, was made on his right tonsil, but had spread to the other side of his mouth and was also found in bilateral lymph nodes in his neck.
[4] He was also profiled in a chapter in the book, Live Strong: Inspirational Stories from Cancer Survivors published by the Lance Armstrong Foundation about survivorship.
[5] In 2005, Hill was invited to speak at the World Health Organization's Oral Cancer Conference, which took place on the island of Crete, Greece, in 2005.
Out of many collaborative efforts, the most visible was the production of public service announcements that played on TV stations nationally in the United States.
In 2006, a public service announcement from Jack Klugman produced by OCF aired on US television, talking about tobacco use and the need for screening for oral cancers.
The public service announcement, which spoke to his loss and how early discovery might have changed it, aired nationally on TV over three months and received 33 million viewer impressions.
Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay, gave OCF items to auction off such as backstage meet and greet opportunities with the band during their Head Full of Dreams Tour in the US.
[15] In March 2022 award-winning actor, producer, and writer Stanley Tucci was announced as an advisory board member for the Oral Cancer Foundation.
[16] While celebrity attention dominated this period, Hill continued to be featured in the media explaining how a person can tell if their dentist is checking properly for cancer something that OCF has pressed the profession to be actively engaged in.
The study was published in Clinical Cancer Research and revealed that the use of subtractive proteomics helped understand how proteins in saliva differed between people with oral squamous cell carcinoma and those without.
The paper was published in Cancer Prevention Research and found that tonsil carcinoma significantly decreased when the patient had previously undergone a tonsillectomy procedure.
[32][33] As part of an information campaign stretching back over two decades, when the relationship of the virus and oropharyngeal cancer was first elucidated through the publication of work by an OCF board member and often research partner, Dr. Maura Gillison, OCF has frequently pushed to raise awareness for the need to increase vaccination rates in the United States for the HPV vaccine.
[35] In August 2009, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced males would for the first time be offered the HPV vaccine for boys aged 11 to 12 years old.
After many years of work to finally get approvals for the HPV vaccine to be used without preference to gender, the organization was disbanded as it had just that one successfully accomplished mission.
In 2014 OCF teamed up with rodeo cowboy, Cody Kiser, a bareback bronco rider, as part of an anti-tobacco effort targeting rural America.
Kiser, wearing branded gear was central to the campaign "Be Smart Don't Start", which was aimed at reaching out to young adults in rural America about tobacco use, and understanding the risks.
OCF puts on numerous public walk/run events around the country each year as a mechanism to raise awareness of oral cancer in major cities.
OCF announced over a decade ago that they would be helping survivors with lifelong swallowing complications (dysphagia) from oral cancer, and a documented financial disparity, by giving away blenders so patients could continue healthy diets while suffering with problems.