As a successful entrepreneur and international, award winning speaker, Jo-Anne has a career that has spanned over four decades as a dental hygienist with the last 20 years dedicated to education and speaking. Jo-Anne has been selected as one of DPR’s Top 25 Women in Dentistry and joins the 2020 Dentistry Today CE Leaders for the 10th consecutive year. 

In the midst of preparing to present her extensive research on HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer to her national association, Jo-Anne’s family were dealt a crushing blow of having a family member diagnosed with late stage HPV-positive tonsillar cancer.  Jo-Anne proudly partners with the Oral Cancer Foundation in conveying the urgent need for changing the way in which we screen for oral cancer to meet the needs of today’s population. Her frank and open style of lecturing complemented by the provision of clinical resources has earned many loyal followers. 

We all hope that we never lose a loved one to oral cancer, but too often it happens. Sometimes there are a series of events that conspire to delay discovery and diagnosis, allowing the cancer to become much more invasive and difficult to cure. Even if that is possible, the morbidity associated with what are by any definition difficult treatments can be substantial. In this podcast we diverge from our science based informational format to speak with someone who has suffered that loss, oral cancer activist Rebecca Bencal who lost her twin sister Venessa to the disease. While this conversation goes through some of the issues related to treatments, there is a bigger take away in it. Learn what fueled her passion to speak about oral cancer, and why early discovery is so important. Understand why in today's environment, when oral cancer screening is still not a national policy, or a part of examinations in every dental office, being your own advocate and  being informed about risk factors and early signs and symptoms is paramount. This isa story of loss. It is also a conversation about what we can do to make this situation better in America.