For the last year, AstraZeneca has been urging sports fans to “Get Body Checked Against Cancer” in a campaign launched in collaboration with the NHL. It’s now ramping up the screening push with a starry new partnership.
The Big Pharma has tapped Erin Andrews, the popular sports commentator and a cervical cancer survivor, to join the campaign, it announced Friday.
The initiative is aimed at encouraging people to ask their doctors about cancer screening and stay up to date on recommended tests in hopes of catching cancer as early as possible, when it’s most treatable.
As part of her coming aboard the campaign, Andrews and AstraZeneca have also released a limited-edition T-shirt that’ll be sold under the broadcaster’s sports fan-focused clothing brand. The “SCREEN” shirt features the Get Body Checked Against Cancer slogan in pink against a pair of crossed hockey sticks, and proceeds will go to the Hockey Fights Cancer fund backed by the V Foundation for Cancer Research.
Mohit Manrao, AstraZeneca’s head of U.S. oncology, said in the announcement that Andrews’ commitment to raising awareness of and encouraging people to undergo regular cancer screenings makes her “the perfect teammate.”
Andrews noted in a statement of her own that her cancer was caught in 2016 by “a routine annual exam.”
“The new SCREEN piece will serve as a reminder, as well as a prompt for conversations with loved ones, to speak with a doctor,” she added. “Together with AstraZeneca, I want to destigmatize the conversation around cancer screenings. Not all cancers are symptomatic, so it’s important to get routine screenings to help find cancers early before they have a chance to spread.”
Andrews isn’t the only familiar face to join the campaign. Shortly after its launch last year, New York Rangers captain Jacob Trouba and his mother shared the spotlight in a commercial for the awareness push.
AstraZeneca kicked off the campaign in early 2024, just a few months after initially teaming up with the NHL on the broader Hockey Fights Cancer initiative, a long-running charitable program founded in 1998 to raise awareness of cancer and support those affected by it.
In that first November 2023 announcement, AstraZeneca pledged to donate $5,000 to the Hockey Fights Cancer Fund for each hat trick of the NHL season, with a goal of $500,000; the company confirmed in this week’s release that it has indeed reached that donation goal.
In another recent addition to their team-up, AstraZeneca and the NHL kicked off the Body Check Cup earlier this month. Hockey fans are encouraged to visit the campaign website to sign a pledge—on behalf of themselves and their loved ones—to undergo regular cancer screening. Each signature provides a chance to win prizes and adds points to their favorite team’s total on a league-wide leaderboard. After the competition closes in early April, the team with the most points will be given $20,000 to donate to a local cancer charity.