MS Awareness Week 2024

For the second year running seven of the UK’s biggest MS charities joined together to mark MS Awareness Week and deliver a unified campaign across all their channels. The week ran from 22 – 28 April 2024. MS Society, MS Together, MS Trust, MS-UK, Shift.ms, Overcoming MS and Neuro Therapy Network worked closely with the MS community to bring the campaign together. The theme and content ideas came from focus groups – ensuring the campaign focused on a topic the MS community cared about. This led to the launch of ‘MS Unfiltered’: a campaign raising awareness of the symptoms many people living with MS might find embarrassing or difficult to talk about. We aimed to tackle some of the stigma around these symptoms and offer support to the community. To strengthen the campaign we surveyed the MS community and over 1,400 people responded. The results showed over a third have avoided seeking medical help due to embarrassing symptoms and 85% of people were embarrassed by at least one of their symptoms. We achieved wide-spread media coverage for the campaign – including national print and broadcast pieces. Content shared on the MS Society social media channels was seen by over 2.2 million people and media coverage had a potential reach of 42.8 million people. The hashtag #MSUnfiltered was used thousands of times by people sharing their own experiences. We also created engaging social media content with members of the MS community and leading MS healthcare professionals.