Activities

Awareness Raising in 2006                                                                   

The Resource Centre has undertaken a variety of approaches to awareness raising this year which are outlined below. More details and evaluations will be added shortly.

Press releases

UK press release with leading UK voluntary sector agencies
World press release with leading international voluntary sector agencies

Radio Interviews

In the week leading up to World Hepatitis Awareness Day, David Cameron (C Plus) and Dr Nicola Rowan (Resource Centre) ran a series of radio interviews across the following UK and international stations. The UK stations covered were predominately in Scotland in agreement with the Dept of Health (England) to enable their FaceIt Campaign to cover stations in England.

The 4th UK Hepatitis C Mentoring Conference

Our Mentoring Conferences are a unique experience for anyone living with hepatitis C. They are organised for hepatitis C individuals, their families and carers. Our 4th conference was held out with England for the first time but we were glad to see both old and new faces at the event. The conference provided information and approaches to dealing with concerns and issues that arise as part of daily life when living with the virus.

As in previous years, we were very grateful to delegates who approached our staff to thank them for providing a friendly environment to meet others living with hepatitis C and for the chance to talk about their own experience and hear those of others first hand. Thank you to everyone who attended and made the day such a success.

Parliamentary Event

The Resource Centre held a single parliamentary event this year in Scotland to enable Munro and Foster to hold a series of events in London as part of the FaceIt campaign. These took take place in the week proceeding the 1st October.

The Resource Centre also agreed to participate in a national conference focusing on the forth coming Welsh Hepatitis C Strategy in November rather than pre-empt this with an event at the end of September in Wales.

The parliamentary event in Scotland was a reception in the Scottish Parliament to mark the first World Hepatitis Awareness Day. It also provided the first presentation and public debate on the National Action Plan on Hepatitis C for Scotland – Phase 1. The event debated professional awareness raising and directly feed into the Action Plan implementation in this area.

Further details and the result of the debate will be published shortly.

Awareness Workshops

We ran a series of half day events across the UK for anyone seeking information, advice or education on hepatitis C. Each included professionals working directly or indirectly with blood borne viruses interested in networking, collaborating and information sharing to progress and understand hepatitis C or service provision at a local level.

The format was a mix of presentations and interactive discussion sessions. Spokes persons included staff from the UK Hepatitis C Resource Centre, local service providers, specialist nurses and consultants who kindly outlined the local setup for testing, treatment and care in their area.

Workshop locations in 2006 included:

Newcastle
Plymouth
Chester
Truro
Fife
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Aberdeen
Cardiff
Bangor

Other Activities

The Centre created a series of new online resources launched in the weeks surrounding World Hepatitis Awareness Day including:

The launch of this new web site

• Launch of the UK Hepatitis Services Directory

• Launch of the UK Hepatitis Training and Education Directory

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