About Northwestern University Uplifting Athletes

Uplifting Athletes is a national nonprofit organization aligning college football with rare diseases. Each campus chapter is run by football student-athletes and works to elevate its chosen rare disease as a national priority through outreach, research, education and advocacy.

Our network of university chapters brings the mission of Uplifting Athletes to life.

As part of our outreach program, each university chapter is run by current football student-athletes and adopts a rare disease that has personal meaning to their team. These rare diseases affect less than 200,000 Americans and consequently little attention is paid to them.

College football players in each university chapter hold special events, fundraising campaigns or awareness drives to attract fans and media, making their chosen rare disease more popular and generating new money for research.

The Northwestern Chapter raises money and awareness for Niemann-Pick Type C. They selected this rare disease in honor of former Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian, who started the Ara Parseghian Medical Research Foundation after his three youngest grandchildren were diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type C in 1994.