Finalist
Don’t turn your back on it
Summary of work
‘Don’t Turn Your Back On It’ (DTYBOI) is a global initiative aiming to increase awareness of inflammatory back pain (IBP). It encourages people to be proactive and visit a healthcare professional in order to get a timely and accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment and care.
The initiative focuses on raising awareness of the unacceptable delay in diagnosing inflammatory back conditions. Specifically targeted at people aged 20 to 40, the initiative encourages people who have had back pain for three months or longer to answer a five-question, medically validated, symptom checker to find out if they might be at risk of having an inflammatory back condition, such as axial spondyloarthritis (AxSpA).
The DTYBOI live events - supported by the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society (NASS), the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) and local clinicians - were pivotal to the success of the initiative and targeted town centres in localities where GP education on recognising the signs and symptoms of IBP had already taken place. They were highly successful in capturing the attention of the target 20-40 age group and provided the platform from which to engage them further on the topic of IBP via an online symptom checker, the DTYBOI website and their informed GPs, for more information and support.
Judges’ comments
This campaign moved right away from the negatives and focused on the positives. There was great alignment between the objectives and metrics that enabled them to cleverly evaluate and demonstrate the very real difference that was made to the target audience.
