After driving the biggest Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) Awareness Campaign in the history of the condition, Sanius Health continues to work with community advocates to continue its momentum.

Sanius Health launched the second wave of its “This Is What Sickle Cell Looks Like” campaign – the biggest sickle cell campaign in history. The campaign to date has reached thousands of people across the country, with SCD patient stories as part of an ongoing awareness-raising campaign.

Pop culture icons, patient organisations and advocates have partnered with Sanius Health to spread awareness regarding health inequalities and living with the condition. Working with SCD voices in the public eye, including Wireless headliner Bellah and musician A-Star, the campaign has expanded with 200+ bus billboards rolled out nationwide. As a result of the campaign, 1,147 people shared images across social media – and the billboards achieved over 28.4 million impressions across the country.

From its inception, the goal of the campaign was to increase awareness around SCD, in order to better people’s understanding of the illness. Its communication strategy aims to show the importance of support, outreach and starting conversations among public health workers and contacts, as well as information on care developments in SCD. Local advocates and spokespersons for the disease have been featured in campaigns, sharing stories of the most vulnerable and challenged communities. The refreshed campaign raises the condition’s profile to new heights, focusing on SCD stories that are otherwise hidden from the public eye. Above all, Sanius Health’s campaign champions patients’ experiences, bravery and advocacy by bringing the community front and centre of the campaign’s content.

The campaign features notable names from all sectors, including Pop Culture, Music, Fashion and Athletics. These include world-class athlete Herty Quaye, model Patrish Zea, and recording artists Bellah and A-Star, who have generously shared both their victories and challenges. UCL graduate and advocate Patrish bravely shares her story with SCD, from the challenges she has faced to how she taught herself to walk again:

“I have had complications in my legs, and I had to learn how to walk again. There is more to Sickle Cell Disease than having a vaso-occlusive pain crisis. It can be very debilitating. There is so much more that comes with this condition, and it affects every part of your life.”

Active embers of the SCD community and Sanius Health’s ecosystem have responded to the campaign, saying that they “finally feel represented” and were moved by the “compelling” stories. Harriet Q., on social media, states:

“This is amazing. The stories are very compelling. Thanks to everyone for sharing – we are really pulling through regardless.”

Another patient, Kareemah N., echoed similar sentiments by saying:

“The campaign is so beautiful, and I felt like for once someone actually gets me – especially because I’m the only one in my family with Sickle Cell!”

Sanius Health founder and Chief Executive Officer Orlando Agrippa, hopes that the campaign will encourage more patients like Kareemah and Harriet to feel represented and prioritised by health providers. By driving much-needed conversations about the disease, Orlando believes that the campaign will encourage further investment of resources, intelligence and efforts required to make a positive impact on the community:

“This campaign was delivered in order to shed more light on SCD, and to give members of the community the opportunity to lead on conversations around ‘this is what sickle cell looks like”.

“Our ambition is to deliver a high-reach and high-impact awareness campaign, which will support advocacy on behalf of the community. By working with patients, clinicians and researchers, it is important that we continue to support innovations in SCD: driven by our patients’ experiences and advanced predictive data capabilities.”