An awareness campaign, «Defend your passions», to raise awareness among young people about this serious disease which in 10% of cases is fatal and in 20% leaves permanent consequences
«Laboratorio Adolescence» launches the awareness campaign in recent weeks «Defend your passions», aimed at adolescents, for the prevention of meningococcal meningitis, one infectious disease particularly bacterial dangerous and insidious. Dangerous because in 10% of cases turns out mortal e in 20% leaves permanent consequences.
Insidious because, transmitted by airmakes the contagion difficult to prevent and why there are many “infectors”. healthy carriersthat is to say they have the bacterium but don’t know itas they have not developed the disease and are in perfect health.
Little known disease
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Precisely because of the way in which one comes into contact with the bacterium, the teenagers – for their lifestyle that brings girls and boys into physical proximity and promiscuity – they are among the most affected from this disease. Added to this is that meningococcal meningitis is also one little known disease.
From the latest national survey on the lifestyles of adolescents living in Italy, carried out annually by the Adolescence Laboratory and the IARD research institute, it appears that il 63% of the girls and boys interviewed (age range 12-19 years) claims not to know how this disease is transmitted and a further one 12% exclude that it is transmitted by air.
Prevention campaign
So what to do? Hence the idea of Laboratorio Adolescence to create, in collaboration with Pfizer, a information campaign for the prevention of this disease, which will start from Lombardy and will gradually develop in other territorial areas, reaching adolescents, with information posters and leaflets, in the places they frequent more usually – such as schools, gyms, community centres, sports clubs, medical and pediatric practices – and through social media which, for 69% of them, have become one of the main sources of information also regarding health, according to the results of the Adolescence Laboratory – IARD survey.
Information on how the infection occurs
«The objective – explains Marina Picca, president of SICuPP Lombardia (Italian Society of Pediatric Primary Care) and vice-president of Laboratorio Adolescence – is to inform them that this disease exists, which mainly affects them, and that we can do a lot to prevent it».
Aware that it is not easy to interest adolescents in health issues and even more so in prevention, the strategic choice of the information campaign, developed in collaboration with Mediatyche Comunicazione, was to develop it on two levels, one emotional and one rational.
In the first instance we enter into the life of an adolescent by inviting him to defend, from an insidious and dangerous disease, spaces and habits that are closest to his heart and, secondly, we give him the directions on where to find information and solutions.
Using posters for physical spaces and reels for social media, the campaign evocatively recalls life situations typical of adolescents – such as sports, dancing, kissing – and refers, through a Q-Code, to a video in which a teenager provides more detailed information on the disease and on how contagion occurs, he says there is a way to prevent it without giving up your passions and invites you to talk about it with your parents and your doctor.
How to prevent it
In the communication, however, it is never mentioned, deliberately, what it is prevention toolor the Vaccine.
«This is because – Marina Picca further underlines – it is very difficult for a teenager to personally take action to get vaccinated without the involvement of the family and the doctor, so we believed that it was not very useful to give a direct indication, but it was more appropriate, and also educational, to invite him to talk to your doctor which will take responsibility, in this circumstance, to explain why it is particularly important for a teenager to get vaccinated against meningitis”.
On the other hand, if the objective – even beyond this information campaign dedicated to meningococcal meningitis – is to make adolescents more aware and capable of taking care of their health – an absolute good to be promoted -, the best path to take is not to give them “recipes” but information and explanations, and accustom them – also through raising family awareness – to having a closer relationship with their doctor.
