New Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Campaign Features Singer Traci Braxton

A new Pulmonary Hypertension Association awareness campaign is featuring singer Traci Braxton, who has two sisters with related diseases.

The public service ads, an extension of a previous awareness effort, are in print, online, and on radio and television.

One target will be commuters going in and out of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor train stations, according to a press release. The poster-type ad will feature a photo of Braxton with the quote: “Two of my sisters have diseases associated with pulmonary hypertension.”

Her sisters, Grammy Award-winning singer Toni Braxton and Tamar Braxton-Herbert, have diseases linked to PH.

Toni Braxton has lupus, which leads to PH in 9 percent of patients. Tamar Braxton-Herbert has battled blood clots in her lungs for years. That form of PH, called chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, or CTEPH, is believed to occur in up to 4 percent of people who have had a clot.

Pulmonary hypertension is easily mistaken for other respiratory diseases, so an early diagnosis can be life-saving. The association wants to raise awareness among those at risk of developing PH and who might be oblivious to the symptoms or the options for treating the disease.

The key goal of the awareness campaign is to increase the number of early and accurate diagnoses.

The new awareness effort is an extension of the nationwide Heart2CurePH multimedia campaign that the association kicked off in November 2015. Video spots of that campaign are appearing on American Airlines’ in-flight video monitors. And the effort includes social media ads.

The in-flight spots will reach an estimated 950,000 people in August and October alone on nearly 800 American Airlines flights.

Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor trains provide continuous connections daily between Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Newark, New Jersey, Providence, Rhode Island, and other cities. That means tens of thousands of people a day can see the ads.

Thanks to an estimated $69.9 million in donated space and time, Heart2CurePH ads are still running in national media, urban public transit spaces, on professional sports programs, and national radio and TV stations. Estimates are that 140 million people have seen Heart2CurePH ads across the United States.

You can help raise awareness of PH by sharing the campaign’s webpage on social media. You can also offer information about PH, or a story to share with your friends, using the hashtag #Heart2CurePH.