Crowdfunded awareness campaigns including billboards

Posted in 2020!

 

One of the billboard campaigns in Canada got the activist responsible interviewed on national news. Haven't watched. But for one billboard, this is one hell of a good ROI.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1736366905512845488

 

Moved posts

Council responds to billboard criticism from long Covid campaigners

The Medical Research Council has reacted to criticism by long Covid campaigners who put up a large billboard near its Swindon office.

Campaigners from Not Recovered UK say they have been abandoned by health professionals who have failed to find treatments for illnesses such as ME and long Covid.

The group’s nationwide campaign uses huge billboard adverts to highlight what they feel is a lack of effective treatments or help for sufferers of chronic illnesses.

"Aside from raising awareness and calling for appropriate research and treatments, the billboards are a push back on the minimising and harmful narratives these patients will be cured by exercise, diet or mindfulness techniques,” said Aaron Campbell, who founded the campaign.

"It is time that attitudes towards 'invisible illnesses' are changed.”

The Swindon billboard appeared on Rodbourne Road, a mile and a half away from MRC, which is based in the UK Research and Innovation building at Polaris House in Swindon.

Not Recovered UK say they purposefully put the billboard there to get the attention of medical professionals.

Speaking about the criticism, a spokesperson for MRC has said: “UK Research and Innovation’s Medical Research Council funds research to improve human health, including early research through to early phase clinical trials.

“Applications for research funding are judged in open competition and the primary considerations in funding decisions are scientific quality and importance to human health.

“MRC has prioritised research into chronic illnesses such as ME for a number of years, co-funding a Priority Setting Partnership to identify research priorities in this area and maintaining an open highlight notice to encourage ME/CFS research.

“In addition, in 2020, we joined the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) to support research into long-COVID.”

According to the research council, MRC and NIHR have since 2020 collectively awarded more than £50 million for research on ME/CFS and long Covid.


https://uk.news.yahoo.com/council-responds-billboard-criticism-long-150000923.html

 

This is really the best way to achieve something with those billboard campaigns. They need to be placed where medical authorities and the people making those decisions are. It won't sway them, but it will be massively shameful once something happens and they insist that they had no way of knowing or of doing anything different from what they did.

It's also telling about the mentality in the culture of medical research that they point to millions that were badly spent, including on people who literally don't believe in chronic illness, have absolutely nothing to show for it, and still think they did a good job. In any profession, when you fail to deliver anything, especially when you waste millions with nothing to show for it, you're fired. You are probably even unemployable in the industry. The culture of complacency, where results don't matter one bit, is a major factor in why medical research delivers so little.

 

It's also telling about the mentality in the culture of medical research that they point to millions that were badly spent, including on people who literally don't believe in chronic illness, have absolutely nothing to show for it, and still think they did a good job.

 

Just wanted to post a montage of the boards in the UK so far.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1776263776506904840


Also for anyone who missed it there was also a short focus of the boards on an ITV documentary earlier in the year. The person being interviewed is a fantastic volunteer for Long Covid Support -

https://twitter.com/user/status/1766639506982134142

 

This campaign is awesome. Thanks for being awesome @Aaron.

 

Hey guys, we got picked up by a local newspaper yesterday -

https://twitter.com/user/status/1790131113634963608


And tomorrow for Awareness Hour on Twitter we're encouraging people to Quote the Tweet of the billboard article and use the hashtag '#DontForgetME' as well as tagging the Twitter handles of the NIHR staff in the Bradford and Leicester facilities.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1790479954636914997


We also just sent off the letter that the community worked on and emailed it to several NIHR inboxes addressed to Lucy Chappell. We're hoping with the local press, the Twitter work and the emails that we might get a response from them in regards to investing in more research. Please get involved if you can!