AIAA Winner 2020

April 10, 2021

SPAEN Advocacy in Action Award 2020 winners have been announced!

Patient advocacy ensures that people are heard, take action and ultimately improve situations, achieve changes or help to fulfil unmet medical needs. We believe it is time to shout out about how important patient advocacy in sarcomas is - for patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals or anyone interested in sarcomas. We want to celebrate and honor outstanding practices, projects, initiatives or campaigns and the creators working behind these activities.

We therefore invited you to participate in the “SPAEN Advocacy in Action Award 2020”!

However, we acknowledged that we all face a different situation due to the coronavirus pandemic. This confronts all of us with new challenges, but also creates room for new and innovative ideas and solutions.

Giving credit to this new situation, we decided to award two prices for the “SPAEN Advocacy in Action Award 2020”:
•    One prize for one for traditional patient advocacy projects and
•    one for innovative COVID-19 related projects

We have received in total 10 submissions (6 traditional projects/4 COVID-related projects):

Traditional projects:

  • Netherlands: Patiëntenplatform Sarcomen/Chordoma Foundation/Bone Cancer Research Trust/Sarcoma UK - Synergy through cooperation: Collaboration patient organisations servicing patients with primary bone cancer
  • Netherlands: Patientenplatform Sarcomen - Report 'Sarcoma Care in the Netherlands'
  • Poland: The Polish Sarcoma and Melanoma Patients Association - 13th Oncorun Together for health! – in times of pandemic
  • Spain: Fundacion mari Paz Jimenez Casado - 2020 Programme of FMPJC Scholarships / Aid for Training and Research in Sarcomas
  • Sweden: Sarkomföreningen - The campaign "We hade tur"/"We are lucky"
  • UK: Bone Cancer Research Trust - Bone Cancer Awareness Initiative - saving lives through earlier diagnosis

COVID-related projects:

  • India: VCare/SPANDAN - Virtual connections amidst social distancing (COVID-related project)
  • Poland: The Polish Sarcoma and Melanoma Patients Association - „The Shield for Oncology” (COVID-related project)
  • UK: Bone Cancer Research Trust - A dedicated primary bone cancer Support & Information Service and its response to COVID-19 (COVID-related project)
  • UK: GIST Cancer UK - Patient ‘Vox Pops’ (COVID-related project)

The winner in the category "COVID-19 related projects" is:

SPANDAN/VCare - see the project summary here.

 

The two winners in the category "Traditional patient advocacy projects" are:
Bone Cancer Research Trust (see the project summary here) and Polish Sarcoma and Melanoma Group (see the project summary here)