More from the NLCP lung cancer advocacy summit

[Jyoung20]

Here is a link to presentation slides.

http://www.nationallungcancerpartnershi ... age=Summit

This is a great time to contact your local media and here are some tools to help you engage them.

Please let me know if I can help!!

Here are some tips from Lori Hope..a very active advocate..

One of the outcomes of the National Lung Cancer Partnership's Lung Cancer Advocacy Summit in Chicago last month was a recommendation for all 53 attendees to pitch a story to their local news media in the next six weeks. There's a perfect opportunity for anyone impacted by LC to do so in the next couple of days.

You may have heard about lung cancer survivor John Atkinson, recently featured on NBC News, ESPN, and dozens of other prominent media. A 39 year old never smoker, he entered a contest in which golfers wrote essays on why they should get to play in the US Open at Torrey Pines with Tiger Woods. Out of 56,474 essays, John's was chosen as the winner.

John played against Woods last Friday, but the game won't be aired until this Sunday. So now's the time, if you have the strength and energy, to contact local media and offer to "localize" the story – in other words, to make it of interest to local readers, viewers, or listeners - by sharing your own story.

Again, hopefully you'll find below links to the NBC, a San Francisco Chronicle story for background, plus fact sheets and more info about lung cancer to share with the media. In addition, here are some tips about contacting media, culled partly from what we devised at the Advocacy Summit. Good luck, and please do let us know if you have any success!

Lori

Tips for contacting media:

1. Have your 30-second "elevator" pitch ready. You might say something like, "If you're looking for a way to localize this Sunday's US Open with Tiger Woods and Golf Digest contest winner John Atikinson, a never smoker with advanced lung cancer, I'm happy to share my story as a lung cancer survivor [and/or mother/son/advocate/wife/lung transplant/clinical trial participant]. Your viewers/readers/listeners will find this story of great interest. They're wondering why so many people who never smoked are developing lung cancer. They're asking how can the tobacco industry can still spend $13 billion annually to market these addictive substances?"

2. If you send an email, be sure to follow up by phone. Obviously it's best to get the editor/writer in person, but if you must leave a voicemail, keep it very short. And if you do reach the journalist, it's good to ask whether they have a moment to talk before you start your pitch..

3. Have a "cheat sheet" or fact sheet handy, so you know all the relevant stats. Here are a few I prepared for one of my speeches:

• the average American woman is nearly twice as likely to die of lung cancer as breast cancer • The 5 yr survival rate for breast cancer is 88% while only 15% of lung cancer patients survive five years.

• 90% of smokers start when they're teens, before their judgment center is fully developed

• 4000 kids a day still take up smoking;

For more, see http://www.thelungcancerfoundation.org/fact-sheets/

http://www.lungcanceralliance.org/press/pressroom.html

Detailed and excellent info: http://www.nationallungcancerpartnershi ... m?page=faq

More tips on contacting media, and media directories: http://www.lungcanceralliance.org/involved/media.html

San Francisco Chronicle story about Atkinson and the US Open - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... 112Q7Q.DTL

Link to the MSNBC story

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#24990886

God Bless!

Jamie