The role of marketing in helping people walk again

You may remember the remarkable Panorama story from two years ago, “To Walk Again”, about a paralysed man who was able to take his first steps after a cell transplant. This month we are featuring the work of the Nicholls Spinal Injury Foundation (nsif), one of the two UK charities that helped to fund this ground breaking research. Nsif was started over ten years ago by chef David Nicholls when his 18-year-old son Daniel became paralysed from the neck down.

Aged 18 and on his gap year, Daniel was swimming between the safety flags on Bondi beach when he dived into a wave, hit a hidden sandbank that lay beneath and broke his neck.

Traumatised by the sight of his young son unable to move, as well as the other young people with paralysis in the hospital, David told Dan he would do everything possible to get him walking again. He made this promise to Dan without realising that paralysis was “incurable”. So David went on to found nsif with the specific purpose of funding research and development to cure paralysis. Nsif believes that spinal cord injury can become treatable and the research they fund has already made incredible breakthroughs.

The Panorama story followed Darek Fidyka, a 40 year-old man who was paralysed from the chest down after a knife attack in 2010. Pioneering therapy that involved transplanting cells from his nasal cavity into his spinal cord has allowed him to walk again. The treatment, a world first, was carried out by surgeons in Poland in collaboration with scientists in London, whose work was funded by nsif and the UK Stem Cell Foundation.

Mike Milner CEO of nsif said, “That was the first step in an incredible journey that we hope will radically improve the lives of people with spinal cord injury in the future. So far we’ve raised £3.1m to fund research, but we need your help to get us the rest of the way to a cure. Please consider helping us with our PR and event marketing, so that we can continue to fund this cutting-edge collaborative research project”.

Marketing help needed:
nsif runs successful fundraising events throughout the year including a Carol concert on the 29th of November, an online Christmas auction between November 18th and December 4^th, a Cheltenham race day on 19th April 2017 and a Gala Dinner late in 2017. They would greatly appreciate gaining PR support with raising the profile of their events or with event marketing to help engage more participation in these events and to engage more individuals in taking on their own fundraising challenges in support of nsif. If you’d like to learn more about how you can use your marketing skills to support nsif please email Anna Mullenneaux, Chief Matchmaker at Pimp My Cause, at [email protected].