Today, Holly Anderson’s International Baccalaureate (IB) biology class held a lung cancer awareness exposition in the library. Each group of students had its own table from which it presented public service announcement (PSA) videos, articles and its letter campaigns. 

The purpose of the project is to motivate others to advocate for increased funding for lung cancer research.

“The purpose of the letter campaign is to rally support by having people write letters to government officials or research organizations to get more funding to combat lung cancer,” CHS senior Cole Krautkramer said. “Even though lung cancer is the leading cancer killer, it receives the lowest amount of funding for research.”

While the majority of the groups concentrated their letter campaign on Texas U.S. House Representative Kenny Marchant, Krautkramer and Prem Patel also encouraged listeners to write to a variety of cancer foundations and local politicians. 

“We’re sending these letters to foundation CEOs and owners so that they may sponsor our work, not for the direct dealing of acquiring the extra funding,” Krautkramer said. “The funding is more for the national and statewide politicians. We’re writing to Coppell Mayor Karen Hunt for the same reason we are to the foundations.” 

Each group created a template to make it easier for audience members to write their letters to cancer organizations and politicians.

With the issue of vaping being discussed across the country, seniors Pooja Cheruku, Shreya Kottapalli and Tarun Rayapati also decided to use their project to combat the use of e-cigarettes. 

“The purpose of our letter-writing campaign is to send letters to Marchant to increase the amount of research that goes into lung cancer and also to ban flavored e-cigarettes,” Cheruku said.

School board members often visit CHS when projects are being presented in the library. Today, board member Anthony Hill visited to see the finished products.

“These projects are related to the real world and what goes in the real world and they’re very important for students to understand, research, and be a part of the solution,” Hill said.

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