Food Network chef (and former Women’s Health cover star) Giada De Laurentiis has given plenty tips on how to make the perfect pasta and how to whip up a mean chicken Florentine. But now she’s suggesting something totally different: She wants you to protect yourself and your loved ones from skin cancer.
Today, De Laurentiis announced that she has teamed up with Stand Up 2 Cancer, the Melanoma Research Alliance, and the “Protect Your Skin” campaign to make a new television and radio public service announcement about how to stay safe and prevent skin cancer.
“I don’t really do PSAs very often,” says De Laurentiis. “The real reason I did this one is truly because my brother passed away nine years ago now of melanoma, and I was very, very heartbroken.”
De Laurentiis’ brother, Dino, never checked his skin and didn’t go to the doctor regularly. He only discovered his melanoma while working on a movie in Slovakia, when a coworker told him that his sweater looked bloody. A mole on his back had started bleeding, and it wouldn’t stop. He visited a hospital in Vienna—”honestly he only went because he couldn’t keep the bleeding from going all over his clothes,” says De Laurentiis—and was diagnosed with stage nine melanoma at the age of 29.
“He immediately went into surgery, and from there it was all downhill,” she says. Dino’s cancer spread, and he died of liver failure at the age of 31.
“That experience woke me up,” says De Laurentiis. “I realized we ‘re all at risk.”
She urges everyone to wear sunscreen daily, avoid tanning beds, and check out their skin regularly.
“If you see any changes in your moles, go to the doctor and get it checked out,” she says. “You can protect yourself from skin cancer, and you can survive if you get it.”
Check out the PSA:
More From Women’s Health:
Some Melanoma Survivors Don’t Use Sunscreen
What’s Your Skin Cancer Risk?
The New Skin Cancer Fighter