BUFFALO, N.Y. - Next time you drive past a construction site in Western New York, take a peek and see if you can spot royal blue hard hats.
Kevin Hays hopes people notice them and more importantly, ask about them.
Hays is combining two things he knows well - construction and colon cancer - to hopefully spark a conversation about early detection and cancer screenings in the hopes of saving lives.
Doctors found Hays' tumor during a colonoscopy at age 28. He didn't have any symptoms.
Colon cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer among men and women in the U.S. and often times, people don't experience severe symptoms until the later stages of the disease.
Hays had surgery and 10 months of chemotherapy and is in good health today, but he know others aren't quite as lucky. He also realizes that there are plenty of people that don't want to talk about cancer - let alone cancer involving that part of the body.
He started the Blue Hope Hard Hat Initiative to get people talking on job sites. Companies purchase the blue hard hats featuring the colon cancer awareness star on the front. On the side is a hash tag and website that uses a bit of cheeky humor to remind people to protect their you know what.
The initiative is about more than just wearing the hard hats though. Supervisors are encouraged to spend part of their regular construction safety meetings talking about colon cancer.
These so-called "tool box talks" are one way early detection advocates are helping to achieve success with another public initiative: 80 by '18. The goal is to boost the colorectal cancer screening rate from the current 65% to 80% by 2018.
The American Cancer Society estimates that doing so will avert more than 280,000 diagnoses and save more than 200,000 lives by the year 2030.