“When your body is having to adjust so much to the different drugs a lot of your skin does get incredibly irritated,” says musician Delta Goodrem, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2003 at the age of 18. “Finding something that is soothing, helpful and healing is a part of that.”
Delta Goodrem is the face of skincare brand La Roche-Posay’s Fight with Care initiative.Credit: Carlotta Moye
Goodrem, who has her own foundation in partnership with St Vincent’s Hospital and The Kinghorn Cancer Centre, agreed to promote Fight with Care because of La Roche-Posay’s work with The Princess Alexandra Hospital and The McGrath Foundation.
“It’s been 20 years since I was diagnosed and a lot has changed since then,” Goodrem says. “When my first album came out it was number one at the time I was diagnosed with cancer. Throughout my entire life I’ve heard different stories about what people are going through and their different challenges and symptoms.
“Because I had so much love and well wishes in that time of being an 18-year-old, it is important to me throughout the course of my life to give back in different ways.”
Goodrem’s connection with cancer is clear, but La Roche-Posay’s role in bringing awareness to health issues can be confusing to those outside of France. A visit to the brand’s headquarters, in the medieval village of La Roche-Posay, nearly 260 kilometres south of Paris, brings things into focus.
Since the 1940s, treatments at the town’s thermal spa using selenium-rich waters for eczema, psoriasis and cancer patients have been supported by French social security.
The thermal springs in the French town of La Roche-Posay where patients receive treatment for skin conditions.
The skincare brand, which has a focus on treating sensitivities, was launched there in 1975 with thermal water used in all of its products. In 2018, L’Oréal acquired the company – which promotes itself as the being recommended by 90,000 dermatologists.
For La Roche-Posay’s new president Alexandra Reni Catherine, initiatives like Fight with Care are more than an opportunity to promote the brand’s close relationship with medical professionals.
“We dedicate 1 per cent of our global turnover to supportive care for cancer patients,” Catherine says. “We have also developed free tech tools based on AI, like Spot Scan, to reach more patients in a global context of dermatologist scarcity. More than words, these are facts.
“Our obsession is to be life-changing.
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“Skin health is a matter of public health and an underestimated matter. Nearly one third of people on the planet live with skin issues.”
As part of their latest awareness initiative the brand has developed a support guide for skin for those facing cancer, along with free online training sessions for patients and caregivers covering mental health, skin and nails along with nutrition.
“The novelty of this, from my perspective, is that there is a proactive phase,” says Khosrotehrani. “It’s not about waiting for people to get their side effects and then starting to do something about it. It can advise on doing a soap pre-wash, moisturising, using a sunscreen and cooling devices for the hair.”
“The goal here for healthy skin is that the cancer treatments can be continued without delay or interruption.”
The writer travelled to France as a guest of La Roche-Posay.
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