Madison Snyder, 2nd-year UNC School of Medicine med student and 2025-26 NC Schweitzer Fellow, pens op-ed about how skin cancer can affect a variety of skin tones.
An op-ed by Madison Snyder, 2nd-year UNC School of Medicine med student and 2025-26 NC Schweitzer Fellow, was recently published. In this article, Snyder explains that while melanin can act as a natural defense against the sun’s harmful UV rays, it does not fully protect a person with a darker skin tone from developing skin cancer. A community that is particularly affected is farmworkers who have the occupational risk of spending long hours in the sun performing strenuous labor.
As a UNC Medical Student and Schweitzer Fellow, my medical student partner and I are learning more from Spanish-speaking farmworkers in neighboring counties, including Harnett, Johnston, Sampson, and Duplin, to increase their understanding of preventive health and its importance. A critical part of this focuses on ways to reduce their risk of skin cancer. Coming from a small town by the North Carolina coast, where skin cancer was prevalent, drove me into founding an organization at UNC Charlotte focused on raising awareness on the importance of skin cancer prevention for everyone. This, along with my interest in volunteering my time with an experienced non-profit community-based organization, the North Carolina Farmworkers’ Project, pushed me to further this education for farmworkers.
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