Bicycle Trek Through Berkeley Heights Helps Raise Melanoma Awareness

Joseph E. Enright was a physician and a cancer patient who succumbed to cancer after the diagnosis of malignant melanoma.

It’s not unusual to learn of a cancer death; worldwide roughly 7.5 million people die from cancer each year. Cancer has many permutations. But a melanoma, like Enright’s, is known as easier than most cancers to spot and diagnose early. For most people, a melanoma is acquired through extended sun exposure and appears as a dark spot or mole on the skin.

On Saturday at Summit Medical Group’s campus, The Joseph E. Enright Foundation held its third annual bicycle Trek — a 20-mile ride through Berkeley Heights, Chatham, Long Hill, Harding and Basking Ridge to raise funds in support melanoma awareness.

The event also featured free skin cancer screenings, massages, DJ Entertainment, and food, along with gift giveaways. The foundation expects to raise over $20,000 through the Trek. Funds raised will support programs to build awareness and help prevent melanoma and other skin cancers such as seminars and free skin cancer screening for the community.

“Melanoma is he easiest cancer to fix if you can catch it early,” said Chip Madsen, executive director of the Enright Foundation.

Madsen is living proof that early detection can be life-saving. Madsen recently had a malignant mole melanoma removed from his lower chest.

“I had a buddy telling me that I had to have a mole on my chest looked at and I just pushed it off,” Madsen said. “Then I went to a dermatologist who said that it was serious and that it had to come out now. Then the surgeon said the mole was 4 mm (small is a millimeter, medium is 2 mm and large is 4 mm), ‘it has probably metastasized to your other organs and you have six months to live.’” he told me.

The next day he had surgery and is now cancer-free.

“I am the poster boy for the program,” Madsen quipped.

Madsen said that the foundation is planning  to launch formal educational programs that will be presented to the community. The foundation will take its awareness campaign to camps and plans to take its “very few screenings to thousands of screenings this summer,” Madsen said.

The Summit Medical Group, which was the primary sponsor of the Trek, plans to be as much a part of the Joseph E. Enright foundation as much as possible.

“I see that the Enright Foundation is very related to the Summit Medical Group,” said Dr. Robert Brenner, the Medical Director of Summit Medical Group. “The cause is really good and a lot of board members of the Enright Foundation are part of the Summit Medical Group.”

Brenner cautioned that melanoma is not only easily detectable, it is preventable. “If you can prevent skin burns early in your life you can prevent skin cancer,’” he said.