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National Eczema Week

National Eczema Week 2010 - Ditch the Itch Activity Report
Leaflets and Fact Sheets

When we unveiled our 2010 National Eczema Week campaign we never imagined the response it would generate!  By focusing our efforts primarily on adults with eczema, it’s clear we tapped into a huge and previously unmet need that saw us literally inundated with requests for information and help.

To meet this demand we were delighted to unveil our new Living with Eczema for adults booklet, which looks at causes of eczema, the various treatments and how to reduce or control the itch. We are grateful for a grant from the Shirley Manknell Discretionary Trust, which supported our design and print costs.

Over 1,000 helpline calls were received on the Monday of National Eczema Week alone – and over 3,500 over the entire week – following features in both the Sunday Express S magazine and that day’s paper, while over 500 booklet orders were placed online. In total over 4,000 free copies of the new Living with Eczema booklet have been sent out to people with eczema and a special thank you goes to our helpline advisors who managed to cope with such huge demand.

However, it wasn’t just adults with eczema who were contacting us in their droves. Hundreds of families with eczema also got in touch and, once again, demand for information was so high that we had to update our Childhood Atopic Eczema, Mind over Eczema and Contact Dermatitis booklets in order to meet their needs.

Helpline

We also supplied posters, booklets and membership cards to over 250 healthcare professionals across the UK who hosted information events to mark the week. As always we are extremely grateful for the support of the medical profession who are so vital to raising awareness – not only of the condition, but also the help and support that the National Eczema Society can provide. 

A special mention must also be given to our valiant four-strong head office team who – in the face of an overwhelming and unprecedented response – managed to ensure that every enquiry and request was dealt with promptly, and who managed to keep smiling throughout! It was a baptism of fire for our new recruit, Team Assistant Grace Marshall, who joined us in August.
NESWHCP2010

We were also delighted to work with Alliance Dermatology on a healthcare professional campaign that included the launch of a new educational guide for primary care nurses, written by leading dermatology nurses Susan Maguire, Barbara Page and Liz Parrish. The Dermatology Community Education Guide is available free of charge to healthcare professionals and provides an accessible and informative guide to eczema diagnosis, treatment and management. Our joint aim is to give primary care nurses access to the very latest eczema information in order to help us improve the care and support that you, our members, receive in the community.

Alliance’s support of National Eczema Week also enabled us to offer our healthcare professional supporters up to 30 free copies of our patient booklets, which they could tailor to suit the particular needs of their practice.

And their support didn’t end there, as visitors to our website www.eczema.org were also offered free 50-g tester pots of their popular Hydromol® ointment!     

Our corporate supporters and their sales teams were once again invaluable in getting our message out to patients, with over 15,000 membership cards distributed to GP surgeries, pharmacies and secondary care. Thanks go to Alliance Dermatology, Dermasilk, Dexeryl, Leo Pharma and Lipikar Balm for their ongoing support.

Thanks also go to Stiefel.a GSK company whose educational grant enabled us to add a new vodcast to our website showing how to apply emollients correctly – something we are asked repeatedly about, especially by the newly diagnosed.

Finally, Chief Executive of the National Eczema Society, Margaret Cox, also worked closely with E45 to increase patient awareness of the Society and the services it provides through both a web eczema clinic on Netmums – which was live throughout the week – plus a national broadcast day and online podcast on a very busy www.eczema.org receiving on average 2,300 unique visitors a day.

As always, we were also overwhelmed by your support during National Eczema Week. So many members – and their families, friends and colleagues! – took time out of their busy schedule to organise fundraising events and information days, thereby ensuring that eczema was at the forefront of people’s minds in their local community. 

Unfortunately, we can’t include everyone’s event but some of the highlights can be found in our “Your News” pages.

© The National Eczema Society. Registered with the Charity Commission for England & Wales (number 1009671) and a company limited by guarantee (number 2685083) registered in England
Registered office: Hill House, Highgate Hill, London, N19 5NA UK