May was ALS Awareness Month.
Again this year it featured daily vignettes of families dealing with ALS on the MDA ALS site. This year it featured a flatteringly similar campaign of vignettes of families dealing with ALS on the ALSA site.
We saw almost a thousand advocates converge (some enduring huge amounts of difficulty to get there) on Washington, DC, to talk to legislators about old and new legislative priorities related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and the wicked wake it leaves, especially for veterans.
What were the outcomes? What were the measurables? What value did ALS Awareness Month add?
Google gives us an interesting and inexpensive insight into news measures. Google "amyotrophic" and look at news items in May. There are a few items related to the vignettes. There are more items related to local human interest stories. There are more than enough obituaries. There are fundraisers. There are a few press releases from the bio-pharm industry with "promising" science which might impress investors.
Try the same exercise to look at the Google news archive from any other month.
Did ALS Awareness Month give us any increase in the quality or quantity of news related to ALS awareness?
1 comment:
Can someone tell me why May is ALS awareness month in the US, but June is ALS awareness month internationally? Wouldn't it be better to have them coincide? I guess not.
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