Thank you for your support during Sepsis Awareness Month!

 

Now that the first ever Sepsis Awareness Month is over, we at Sepsis Alliance would like to thank everyone who helped shape it and share it. Every year, more people will learn what Sepsis Awareness Month is all about.

SA worked on many ways to spread the word throughout the month. Our Sepsis Victim Counter, featured on the site’s front page, counted the number of adults around the world who were diagnosed with severe sepsis. From September 1 to September 30, 2011, this number came out to 1,524,705.

Our outreach has helped people find out about sepsis and SA. Many who discovered us contributed their stories to Faces of Sepsis. When asked how they found out about SA, some people mentioned seeing the Rachael Ray segment, others were told by the nurses who cared for them, some did web searches, and one woman said that her sister told her it was Sepsis Awareness Month. Not aware that this was the first year SAM existed, she told us she wished she had known about it a few years ago, when she was fighting her sepsis battle. We might not have been around then, but we are doing our best to make a difference now. As of now, we have 68 Faces of Sepsis stories up now and more come in every week.

SA used Twitter daily (@sepsisalliance), tweeting tips and bits of information about sepsis and encouraging our followers to retweet them. On Facebook, we grew from 812 people who “liked” our SA Facebook page to 1,015 on September 30. One of our newest FB people wanted to hand out ribbons to symbolize the month and the idea was picked up by others. Her red and black ribbon was worn by several people. Hopefully next year, there will be even more.

Our bumper sticker slogan contest was fun – thank you to everyone who voted. The winning slogan was:  KNOW SEPSIS. Bumper stickers and car magnets with the slogan are now available for $5 over at SA’s store, found at www.cafepress.com/sepsis_alliance. If you want to be sure that your product supports SA, check the description for "This is a Sepsis Alliance product." There are t-shirts, tank tops, caps, mugs, mouse pads and more that display the SA logo and the SAM logo, and some have the KNOW SEPSIS slogan. Some of our FB people have told us that they have been wearing their sepsis shirts and they have been asked what sepsis is as a result. Also, don't forget - we'd love photos of you or your car wearing or using your SA stuff!

So, now we start planning for Sepsis Awareness Month 2012. If you have any ideas and suggestions for us to make next year’s SAM better, please send them on! The more people we have contributing their thoughts, the more successful we can be. The people working behind the scenes at SA can always be reached through the contact form on the site or an email at info@sepsisalliance.org.

Thank you again.