[MUSIC PLAYING] CHRIS DRAFT: Very often what I'm giving a speech, I try to level set a room and I ask the question, how many of you guys woke up this morning and jumped up and said let me be a lung-cancer advocate? Usually there's nobody that raises their hand. They become advocates because of somebody in their lives are diagnosed with lung cancer, and so I'm not any different.

My name is Chris Draft. I graduated from Stanford University. Played in the NFL for 12 years. I finished up in 2010. My wife Keasha, November 2010, we were working out in the gym right back over here. Keasha had a little shortness of breath. All of a sudden, December 2010, lung cancer.

We found out the most important fact about lung cancer is that anyone can get it. 37-year-old woman in amazing shape that never smoked in her life. We had a chance to get married November 27, 2011, and on that day we made two commitments, one to each other, but the other one was to the lung-cancer community. Team Draft Initiative was founded on that day to fight for other people. And unfortunately she passed a month later, so that commitment that she made is how things change when we stand up and we want things to improve.

We can't just hope. We have to put it into action. The historic message was only to get people to stop smoking. But based on my wife's story and too many other people, we recognize very easily that prevention is not enough. We do need prevention, absolutely, but early detection, treatment, research, and survivorship.

So unfortunately, the national partner, we couldn't find one. They had not accepted the research matter. Their priorities were only prevention. It was critical that we essentially made a case that research mattered. So 2012, we started our campaign and kicked it off at the Super Bowl. It changed the face of lung cancer, which led me to 60 cancer centers in the first year.

What was the message? We need you doctors. We need you experts to be able to stand up. We need you cancer centers to be able to stand up. We need you to say that we are making a difference and this is a good investment.

If we believe that anyone can get it, it's a fight for people that are walking down the street. And how do we make that case? That case is with our survivors. They're going to challenge those cancer centers to maintain the sense of urgency. We're building an army, an army of survivor advocates.

Hey, Bonnie. How are we doing?

BONNIE ULRICH: Hey, Chris. How you doing?

CHRIS DRAFT: I'm doing great.

BONNIE ULRICH: I am so grateful you came into my life. You give me more strength to go out and do what I need to do. Chris, to all of us, what you're creating, LaKeasha would be so proud.

CHRIS DRAFT: Thank you so much, Bonnie.

First year, we did our survivor at every game, which transitioned to our lung-cancer survivor Super Bowl champion. And we're saying whoever raises the most, that person's going to go to the Super Bowl and represent the lung-cancer community and let them know that they matter because you know that anyone could get lung cancer.

As we move forward, there's going to be more and more innovation. And again, our Super Bowl is about driving funding, and claim the victories. The last three years, lung cancer has had more drugs approved than any other cancer. That didn't happen without investment, and we need to fight for it with a sense of urgency.

It's not just lung-cancer awareness. It is the awareness that things are changing, that we can save lives, we can improve lives, and it's got to be aggressive. What does lung-cancer awareness look like? It says we have to be committed to maxing out everything we can in terms of prevention, early detection.

We cannot accept if there are people that can benefit from lung-cancer screening they don't get screened. We can't have game-changing treatments and have certain doctors not doing biomarker testing. It's unacceptable when we know the difference. And then research-- if we know that it translates directly into the change that saves lives, we've got to go shout it from the mountaintop and fight with a sense of urgency that says if you just got diagnosed, we're meeting you. We're not going to wait. We know you're scared. We know you're overwhelmed. We want to make sure if you can benefit from all these innovations that are here, you've got to get them, and we've got to be mad if that doesn't happen, so mad that we'll fix it so it won't happen again.