Medicine and dentistry students fundraise for Movember with shirtless calendar

With shirtless photos and their best facial hair, students in the faculty of medicine and dentistry and the faculty of pharmacy have kicked off their Movember campaign with hopes to raise $10,000 for the Movember Foundation.

The Movember campaign has been a tradition in the faculty of medicine and dentistry for the last five years, raising money and awareness on a variety of health issues including prostate cancer. Fourth-year dentistry students Shahed Bayestehtarat and Kevin Amaniampong are running the fundraising campaign this year, including a calendar sale, a new Movember Move initiative, and a hockey game between pharmacy students and dentistry students on December 5.

Bayestehtarat hopes that the campaign will help people become self-advocates for their health.

“The Movember campaign itself has always surrounded male-specific cancer and male health, but this year we wanted it to have a more global message,” he said. “We want people to educate themselves about the risk factors of cancer and mental illness.”

The calendar includes a 15-month spread of dentistry, medicine, and pharmacy students with facial hair and their shirts off. Work on the calendars began in February 2018, with photos taken by Bayestehtarat and pharmacy student Lawrence Woo, and are being sold at the Edmonton Clinic Health Academy (ECHA) cafeteria.

Amaniampong believes the calendars are a tool in increasing awareness to help reduce risk factors.

“The calendars include [medical] facts as well, just to get you thinking and help bring that awareness and if you need to speak with your doctor about anything,” he said. “If we get one person to talk to their doctor, our job has been done.”

Some of the medical facts in the calendar include how 230,000 men a year are diagnosed with prostate cancer in the United States, and that about 30,000 will die from it. Compared to Canada, 21,300 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2017 according to the Canadian Cancer Society,  with 4,100 men dying from it that same year.

The campaign is aimed at spreading awareness about not only prostate cancer but people’s own general health. Both Bayestehtarat and Amaniampong want people to learn about the risk factors concerning an individual’s health and to go seek medical advice when warranted.

“This is very important because a lot of people we know from the statistics tend to ignore signs their body is telling them,” Bayestehtarat said. “I find that sometimes when December hits, the initiative is done people and tend to forget about it. Whereas when we have the calendars… every month is kind of a reminder.”

Movember Move is a new initiative this year where participants find pledges to sponsor them a dollar amount for every day they exercise in November. T-shirts were also made with facts about prostate cancer and mental illness printed on them to raise awareness when people are out doing activities like running, walking, or biking.

All proceeds raised from the different initiatives will go to the Movember Foundation. Costs to print calendars and purchase t-shirts for the Movember Move campaign were fundraised for privately before the start of the campaign.

“Everything will be transparent, it will be right on our page so once we hit out our goal at the end of the month it will update there and they’ll see how much we actually raise,” Bayestehtarat said.  “Whether it’s less or more it will be right there.”