Dane Kiambi tells his students about his parents on the first day of class. It is an unusual way to open a public relations course, and it explains nearly everything about how he teaches it.
In 2014, his father was diagnosed with cancer in Kenya, while Kiambi was teaching in the United States. Limited medical resources and an insurance system that often left patients abandoned meant every appointment demanded hours of travel, hired drivers and constant coordination from halfway around the world. His father died two years later. When his mother received the same diagnosis in 2020, the cycle started over, with long trips to Nairobi, out-of-pocket payments and a patchwork of support. She died in 2022.
The logistics were worse than the bills
Each oncology visit meant arranging transport, lining up helpers, making sure his parents understood what the doctors said, and finding a way to pay. “The financial burden was crushing, but the logistical burden was almost worse,” Kiambi said, a line that sticks because people rarely count it. “My parents had none of that infrastructure.”
They were hours from specialists, he said, with no local support system and no one bringing educational materials or connecting families with resources.
Turning it into coursework
Kiambi is an associate professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. After the loss, he asked himself how the pain could become something purposeful. His answer was to build his courses around partnerships with cancer-fighting nonprofits.
The results are concrete. His students worked with the Lymphoma Research Foundation and won first place nationally in the 2022 Public Relations Student Society of America Bateman Case Study Competition. In spring 2024 they partnered with Angels Among Us, an Omaha organization that supports families of children undergoing cancer treatment in Nebraska. Most recently his public relations capstone class went back to the Lymphoma Research Foundation to launch its Collegiate Champion Program, which invites college students nationwide to carry the foundation’s resources to oncology clinics in their communities and help raise money for lymphoma research and patient services.
The pilot started with no budget, relying on grassroots organizing and a relationship-driven approach, according to the Sandhills Express. Kiambi describes the two parts plainly: students first share resources with campuses and clinics, then fundraise. He cites a figure that shaped the focus. “Ninety-thousand young adults in the U.S. are diagnosed with cancer,” he said. “One in five of those has lymphoma.” Depending on how it goes in Nebraska, the program could spread to other colleges.
“If programs like this had existed in Kenya, maybe their journey would have been less isolating and less tormenting for me,” Kiambi said. He ties the work to his own culture too: “In Kenyan culture, we honor our ancestors by carrying forward their values and ensuring their struggles weren’t in vain.”
The students get something out of it as well, learning stakeholder mapping, strategic messaging and crisis communication on live campaigns. Kiambi plans to keep centering his courses on cancer nonprofits and to add partner organizations.
Sources
- Kiambi channels grief into teaching, student experiences
- Nebraska Student-led Campaign Pilots Lymphoma Awareness Program
