Lessons from the Stroke Campaign

We were debating today the Stroke Association’s success in getting people to understand the signs of a stroke. We were all agreed that the FAST campaign had stuck in people’s minds.

This is an achievement that has taken several years. At first, more attention was on heart disease (stroke appeared as a chapter in the national strategy on chronic heart disease (CHD), later it got a strategy all to itself, something we hope asthma will emulate). Now, stroke probably has a higher profile and a better understanding.

One thing that happened is that discussion moved on from the condition (heart disease) to one of the dangerous implications (stroke).

Perhaps asthma could take a similar journey.

Everyone has heard of asthma, although few people understand it. Perhaps that is partly because asthma is a Greek word we now take for granted and don’t think about what it means. Perhaps it’s also because we talk more about  the condition we often invisibly live with and not the dangerous asthma attacks that we want people to understand.

Maybe if we were to talk more about not being able to breathe, more people would understanding what asthma is like and why it needs to be taken seriously.

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