When PromaxBDA member Steve Van Wormer, a senior writer and producer at Fox Sports, needed support to push out a public service announcement (PSA) he created, he turned to the PromaxBDA community.

Van Wormer’s son, Lucas, now 13, was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension when he was just four years old. With early detection and treatment, Lucas has gone on to live a healthy life — he even moonlights as a voiceover artist for Cartoon Network, and you can hear his professionalism in Van Wormer’s spot — but other kids aren’t so lucky.

Since then, Van Wormer has worked to promote awareness of the disease, through the campaign #PHAware.

When he began pushing out spots, one of the first people to jump on board to help was PromaxBDA’s very own LaFern Cusack, senior producer, who interviewed Steve and Lucas, then 12, on her Radio Disney podcast.

From there, “Pivot’s Kent Reese and Murphy Gilson put us in rotation on their network, and Chris Arms from Universal Sports lent a hand. Jim Tasker and Cope Management helped get the campaign on CBS, while Brian Dollenmayer got us on WGN America, just to name a few,” says Van Wormer. “Thanks to the incredible networking opportunity that the conference has provided, I was able to connect with the decision makers for their respective networks and rally them around the idea of using their airtime to make positive change in patients’ lives.”

“Most importantly, my colleges at all the various Fox Networks entities really took this to the next level when they put this out across the entire Fox and Fox Hispanic Networks group,” he says.

Today, the PSAs have been translated into 55 languages and air across all of Fox Network, CBS, Pivot, Radio Disney, MGM, Telemundo and others. “We’ve even created a PSA that was projected on the NASDAQ building in Times Square in New York City.”

“This project really got legs thanks to all my connections in the PromaxBDA community,” Van Wormer says.

Steve and Lucas were just featured in First Entertainment Credit Union’s quarterly magazine, The Show, which was blasted to 75,000 members of the entertainment community and tweeted out by celebrities, such as Courteney Cox, Laura Dern, Jeffrey Hayzlett and Florence Henderson.

Pulmonary hypertension is a rare, debilitating disease of the lungs that affects the functioning of the heart and can lead to heart failure. Without treatment, the average survival rate is less than three years. The problem doesn’t stop at pulmonary hypertension: one in 10 Americans has a rare disease—nearly 30 million people—and two-thirds of these patients are children. For the 7,000 known rare diseases, there are only approximately 450 FDA-approved treatments. Feb. 28 was Rare Disease Day in the U.S.

There are many ways to support the #PHAware campaign. You can like it on Facebook, or follow it on Twitter and Instagram @PHAware. There’s also a PHAWare mobile app available for iPhone/iPad and Android at PHAware.mobapp.at.

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