Each year for the Bateman Case Study Competition, Public Relations, Student Society of America selects a client that students, from 70 universities nationwide, must create a campaign for. In this year’s competition, they partnered with the Lymphoma Research Foundation.

“Currently, more than one million people in the United States are living with, or in remission from, a form of lymphoma — the most common type of blood cancer,” reads the PRSSA website. “The competition will challenge student teams to research, plan, implement and evaluate a public relations campaign centered on raising awareness around the resources currently available to those touched by the disease … More specifically, students will be tasked with educating adolescents and young adults (AYA), while revamping the foundation’s campaign efforts toward eradicating lymphoma.”

The six BYU students have been working together since December. They have designed posters, stickers and fliers that will be passed out by business partners, all local companies throughout Provo, until March 11.

They have also spent time running a lymphoma information booth in the Wilkinson Student Center at BYU where students could sign up to become advocates, as well as creating awareness through social media platforms with the primary goal of educating young people on the disease.

Courtesy Audri Jeffs

“There are two types [of lymphoma] and one of them is more common in young people, and the Lymphoma Research concern was reaching out to young people,” Paige Sherwood said. “It’s been a really cool experience for us because we got to localize it, so we just had to worry about building up this community with the awareness of Lymphoma.”

For Sherwood, raising awareness for the Lymphoma Research Foundation has hit close to home because she was diagnosed with it as a teen. Now cancer-free, Sherwood has enjoyed being able to educate others on something that had an effect on her life.

“It’s been super cool to kind of rely on the experience I had with that and to raise more awareness because when I was diagnosed I didn’t even know what lymphoma was,” Sherwood said. “It’s been so fun to have something I’m so passionate about and be able to educate others.”

The group hopes that theirs will be one of the top three public relations campaigns from the Bateman Case Study Competition chosen in April, which would give them the opportunity to present their work on the national level.

The six students are Sherwood, Sydney Ward, Ivey Droubay, Audri Jeffs, Kimberly Moore and Cadee Wambolt. More information on the students’ “Advocate to Eradicate” campaign can be found online at http://advocatetoeradicate.org/.

Courtesy Paige Sherwood