PARE0001 #doesntshowdoesntexist/#synsintefinnsinte – an awerness campaign for public transport by swedish national organization for young rheumatics

Background “Rheumatism amongst young people, is that really a thing?” “Isn’t rheumatism something that only old people have?” “You seem so happy and so active, surely you can’t be in pain?” These are all questions that young people with rheumatism have to listen to, and answer every day. Yes, it’s possible to have rheumatism even as a young person, and to be in pain, even though we’re not letting it show. We know adjustment is possible, and that we can live our life to the fullest and follow our dreams, despite rheumatism. But sometimes it demands some extra understanding from the people around us. That’s what we wanted to recognize, for the second year in a row, but with another approach, and created a campaign together with AbbVie. Objectives It can be hard to understand and fully grasp something you can’t see, something that is invisible. But as young people with rheumatism, we have to live and deal with our swollen joints, with the pain and the fatigue, and with the side effects of our medication. None of which should be questioned. We recognized that this was an issue for most people with rheumatism, especially young people, and especially in the public transport. Therefore, we wanted to start a conversation about that we, young people with rheumatism that doesn’t show, can also need to sit down at the priority seats. The main purpose with our campaign was to acknowledge the fact that you can’t always tell whether or not a person has a diagnosis, or is in pain. We also wanted to show young people with rheumatism that they are not alone in their situation. Methods We wanted to make a quiz. Each pair of person with and without rheumatism in the campaign is presented in a photo taken on a bus next to each other with a quiz question. For example: “Who of us needs to sit on the bus so we can hang out in the skate park this afternoon?” The whole idea of the quiz is to make people realize that it is impossible to see if a person needs to sit on the bus or not, that you have to trust us when we asks for a seat. Every answer is put together with the person’s story about their passion in life and what it’s like to live and deal with an invisible disability in public transport. The quiz was released on October 9th 2017, together with a new decal for public transport that all of our members helped us put on buses and trains all over Sweden, pins to ware all week for all our members, debate articles in local and national papers, interviews in radio and television, letters and decals to all public transport companies, and a social media campaign with photo and personal story each day. People were also told to share their own stories under the hashtag #synsintefinnsinte Results The campaign ended up being our organization’s most successful campaign to this date, we reached over 4.5 million people – more than we could ever dream of. The campaign had more likes and shares on both Facebook and Instagram than any of our other campaigns has had so far. The debate articles in local and national papers were really important for the campaign and started a lot of discussions, debate and awareness. The photos combined with the personal stories make a powerful statement. We managed to show that young people with rheumatism some days also need access to the priority seats and we look forward to the conversation continuing on at #synsintefinnsinte. Disclosure of Interest None declared