Excellence in Patient Focus

Summary of work

Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis are life-long, potentially life-threatening inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) which affect 1:200 of the population. During 2011, Crohn’s and Colitis UK focused its attention on the Government’s welfare reforms - particularly IBD & Employment; commissioning Surveys of employees & employers, campaigning for better working conditions. Based on the identified problem, namely 68 per cent of charity members felt they had little/no control over their working conditions, the Survey Report achieved excellent quality media coverage and resulted in a Westminster Hall Debate and 13,000 downloads of the Report.

With Sport & Fitness in the spotlight during 2012, Crohn’s and Colitis UK carried out its first Survey on this subject - finding that 80 per cent of members had had to give up sports temporarily/permanently as a result of their condition. With the help of 6 new sports Ambassadors and Champions including Sir Steven Redgrave and rugby star Lewis Moody, the results were distributed among a far wider range of media outlets and audiences than the charity had achieved in previous years, including interviews broadcast across 154 radio stations nationwide, to a total audience of 51 million. Coverage of members’ sporting Challenges increased dramatically over the previous year.

Judges comments

We liked this. They went such a long way to work out what the real issues are and how best to help the patient.