Congratulations to PTC’s Italian team for winning the Reuters Events Pharma Awards Europe 2020 award in the category of Most Valuable Awareness Initiative for Well-Child Visits for Life. This public awareness campaign promoted earlier diagnosis for children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare and debilitating disease.
This campaign was centered around a hero video that illustrated the early signs and red flags for child neuromuscular disorders (NMDs) like Duchenne. Different to other health education videos, it was filmed from the perspective of a small child who recognizes that he, unlike other children his age, is unable to support his own weight or lift his head. These are just some of the key symptoms for NMDs that can trigger a diagnostic further testing.
The use of the video – rather than classic educational materials such as leaflets, flyers or posters – helped to better relate the signs and symptoms of NDMs and convey emotion. Using video also offered dissemination options such as TV and is widely known to support better engagement on social media.
A dedicated Italian website ‘Bilanci per la Vita’ was established as the campaign’s dedicated information hub, providing educational resources, tools and information on NMDs. The site has been visited by more than 41,000 visitors to date.
The success of this and other nominated initiatives by passionate PTC employees around the globe encourages us to continue with further educational content. Together, we can help reduce the average age of Duchenne diagnosis.
Congratulations to our other awards finalists in Europe:
- Improving Duchenne Care with Physiotherapy
- Rare Resolve for Rare Disease – Raising Awareness and Accelerating Diagnosis of AADC Deficiency
- RCPCH – e-Learning for Early NMD Diagnosis in the United Kingdom
- STRIDE Registry – First and Largest Real World Study of Nonsense Mutation DMD
Our project to accelerate DMD diagnosis in Russia was a finalist for a Reuters Events Pharma Awards USA Global Health Pioneer award in 2020.