World Stroke Day 2019 to focus on stroke risk and prevention
The World Stroke Organization has announced the theme for World Stroke Day 2019. With a focus on stroke prevention, the ‘Don’t be the One’ campaign aims to raise awareness of our individual lifetime risk of stroke and to equip as many people as possible with potentially life-saving prevention information and tools.
The rationale for the campaign message is the recent WSO analysis of the Global Burden of Disease, which shows that globally the lifetime risk of stroke has risen and now stands at 1 in 4. Combined with the Interstroke findings that showed around 90% of strokes are linked to a small number of easily addressed risk factors, the potential impact of public understanding of stroke risk and prevention awareness is clear.
Speaking about the World Stroke Day campaign theme, World Stroke Organization Vice President and Campaign Committee co-Chair, Sheila Martins said ‘For me the 29th October is always such an exciting day for the stroke community – it’s the one day of the year that we can come together globally and to make as many people as possible aware of stroke. This year our message When it comes to stroke, think prevention – Don’t be the one.’ is relevant and essential to everyone and we look forward to seeing the stroke community taking up the campaign in countries around the world!’
Co-Chair Deidre De Silva and a leading awareness campaigner Singapore ‘Our team strived to deliver a campaign that will resonate with diverse populations around the world. Stroke is not prevented by hoping it will never happen to you. The campaign encourages everyone to be proactive by understanding their stroke risk and taking the steps to prevent stroke and its devastating consequences.’
World Stroke Day Campaign Resources
A campaign guide for members and the public will provide guidance on how to join the global prevention awareness effort. This will be available from the revamped World Stroke Day website. Members and partners will have access to campaign resources including the campaign video, gifs, editable posters, infographics, social media posts and translated prevention factsheets.
Stroke Riskometer
The Campaign team is also working in close partnership with the Stroke Riskometer team at Auckland University of Technology to promote the WSO endorsed Stroke Riskometer as a tool to understand individual stroke risk and to identify individual risk factors. Riskometer users will be encouraged to conduct their own risk assessment and to share the app on social media tagging four friends. If one person who is tagged downloads and uses the app, they will have free access to an app upgrade that will support them to take appropriate action to reduce their stroke risk.
The Campaign Committee is reaching out to members and supporters asking you to mobilise your global stroke ambassador and influencer network to help us get our potentially life-saving message to as many people as possible.
Please contact awiseman@kenes.com to dicuss further.
