Raising Awareness

June 16, 2016

Campaigns

Every day, week or every month there’s an awareness campaign and there seems to be more of them than ever. It’s a great way for health promoters and charities to advertise when they take place along with interesting things about their history, and helpful information about how you can get involved as well as ideas for your own events. It’s a useful way to get to know about particular conditions and what help and support is out there for patients.

There is a difference between national days and awareness days. Usually awareness days are health related, helping to raise awareness of cancers and illnesses, and also around these days charities collect money. There are also international days that take place each year. Their purpose is to raise awareness of important humanitarian, cultural, social and political issues around the world.

Awareness Days

Awareness days can be both serious and great fun. They are can be about supporting a charity and cover diverse subjects, World Aids Day, National Infertility Awareness Week and International Blood Cancer Awareness Month. The fun side is, for example, a sponsored walk with a group of friends to raise money for a chosen charity.

National Days

National days generally have a fun, or unusual side to them, and are, in some cases staged by commercial organisations to help promote their products and services. But, they often have a serious side too and any donations received as part of any events held on the day are often given to associated charities by these companies.

Dates for your Diary

A few awareness weeks coming up include:

Diabetes Awareness Week: 12^th to 18^th June;
Men’s Health Week: 13^th to 19^th June;
Cervical Screening Awareness Week: 13^th to 19^th June;
Rheumatoid Arthritis Awareness Week: 13^th to 19^th June.

Whilst these are happening within the next week, it’s not too late to download promotional information to make your staff and patients aware. Following that, look ahead to the next couple of months to see what your Practice might like to get involved in. You might have a member of staff who has someone close to them with a particular need or medical condition that you’d like to support and raise some much needed funds for such as a Learning Disability (awareness week 20^th to 26^th June), Sarcoma (awareness week 4^th to 10^th July), a general Disability (awareness day 10^th July), etc. World Breastfeeding Week (1^st to 7^th August) would be good to show support for and engagement with families, speak to your local midwives and Health Visitors to get them involved too.