Awareness Talking about the risks, signs and symptoms, how to prevent meningitis through vaccines, and the importance of acting fast when it strikes, have always been the cornerstone of our awareness activities. We also strive to reach out to people and organisations across the UK to make them aware of the support we can offer, and through our public affairs work, we seek to influence positively decisions taken by politicians, policy-makers and health and care professionals, including scientists and pharmaceutical organisations. These were challenging aims in 2020-21, as a consequence of the distractions and disruptive effects of Covid-19. Yet there were also significant opportunities and emerging needs that became evident across the year, and we were successful in addressing these – including working more closely than ever before with partners. As our Keep Meningitis in Mind survey revealed, there was also a pressing need to provide information about Covid-19 and meningitis and to keep people updated about how we could help them during this difficult time.
Communicating Awareness during Covid-19 We adopted a reactive and a strategic approach to raising awareness of meningitis. In the early stages of the pandemic, for example, evidence from the NHS showed a significant drop in A&E visits compared to the previous year. Concerned about the impact this might have on the diagnosis and treatment of meningitis, we supported and amplified messages encouraging people not to refrain from seeking medical help if they were seriously concerned about their own health or that of others. Using blogs, social media posts and press releases, we supported similar messages from the NHS and public health authorities to encourage people to take-up their routine vaccinations, as evidence from a number of sources indicated a dropping-off of vaccine take-up rates. Our Keep Meningitis in Mind survey also indicated that people had specific concerns about how Covid-19 might affect those people with experience of meningitis. A dedicated Covid-19 page on our website received nearly 70,000 visits – making it the fourth most visited page during the year. We continued to pursue our core awareness activities using a variety of channels and campaign approaches. This enabled us to reach both ‘at risk’ groups and the wider UK population with lifesaving awareness messages. For example:
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We distributed over 485,000 signs and symptoms cards to new and expecting parents via our partnership with Bounty.
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Our social media community continued to grow, increasing by 10% year-onyear to 133,000. In line with expectations, much of this growth came from Instagram, which alone grew to nearly 8,500 followers.
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Over 550 articles in the traditional press and broadcast media were published with reference to Meningitis Now. Whilst this is significantly down year-onyear (2,900 in 2020), the level of coverage achieved exceeded expectations – with all UK adults having the ‘Opportunity To See’ (OTS) articles mentioning Meningitis Now eight times over the course of the year.
