The Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) is running its new #30DaysofStrength campaign in September to raise awareness for MDA’s mission to support families across the U.S. living with muscular dystrophy, ALS and other neuromuscular diseases.
MDA will host events throughout National Muscular Dystrophy Awareness Month that are aimed at engaging with families, clinicians, researchers and others—those vital to the MDA’s continuing campaign for research and funding.
“This campaign hopes to engage the public to embrace the mission of the MDA, support families in every community across the country, educate the public and encourage them to donate and advocate to empower the neuromuscular disease community to live longer, more independent lives,” said Brian Beirne, MDA’s vice president of multichannel marketing, in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing.
“We’re targeting the general public to engage with our collective community.”
Beirne says that the MDA is partnering with pharmas to support its education outreach as well as its fundraising programs via pharma marketing channels. He did not specify which companies, though a number of pharmas are working on and sell drugs and therapies for DMD and ALS, including BioMarin and Sanofi.
He believes pharma companies are not only integral in developing drugs that “may have a life-changing impact on individuals living with neuromuscular diseases,” but they are also good sources of information to the ins and outs of the families living with the diseases. In addition, pharmas are on the front lines of research and healthcare practitioner education.
Specifically, MDA’s registry program, MOVR, collects physician input on a patient’s diagnosis, treatment, progress and any other related data, which ultimately helps patients connect with pharmas for clinical trials.
Plus, Beirne says that pharma plays an important supporting role by blasting out through social media channels both MDA Engage and MDA Access, webinars and symposia for the neuromuscular disease community and their HCPs.
Some creative content coming out of the MDA campaign for the month include a 40-mile dog walk challenge fundraiser and a "Notes of Strength" campaign on social media where supporters can send encouraging messages to families.
“Every story that we share, including each one of these within the #30DaysofStrength campaign, kicking off with our MDA Tribute Tour, in addition to our Muscle Walks, Muscle Team Galas and Quest Media content on our podcast, our magazine and our newsletter, is an opportunity to widen our community of support for the mission in collaboration with pharma’s support,” Beirne said.