First of all, thanks to everyone who showed their support of me in 10th Wego health awards. You nominated and endorsed me for a whole host of categories. I’m humbled and touched by this, and it lead to me winning the “Best in show: Twitter award”. These awards aren’t just a popularity contest. In each category the 3 nominees with the highest endorsement numbers automatically become finalists, and 3 finalists are chosen by Wego’s judging panellists. I think this strikes the balance between listening to what the patient community are saying, and recognising work of those who are quieting and tirelessly working away but don’t have a large following to give them a shout out.
What this award is for…
Essentially this is about what a nominee shares on Twitter. To be a finalist the nominee needs to share useful content that others in the patient community would find handy, and do so regularly and constantly. In addition, this needs to be not just about sharing your own content but other’s too. Everyday I post other’s blog posts that I think will benefit my followers. I do try to find articles on brain injury, but also I share blogs from other chronic illness sufferers, particularly since brain injury survivors often have similar symptoms so lots of people find these posts useful.
Who are Wego and why do they matter?
Wego have formed a network of over 100k patient leaders from across the globe who together represent pretty much every health condition. Together that gives a voice to patients which tells the medical and pharmaceutical industries what patients really want them to know. Yes these industries have to make money to be able to pay the wages of their staff and buy valuable equipment/premises to be able to carry out their work, but the patient still needs to be the focus of everything they do. Too many of us have experienced times when we have felt dismissed or that the information we need isn’t readily available. Pointing this out as an individual should be heard, but lets be honest, it often isn’t. We can be disregarded as a drama queen or just an unfortunate one off case. However, when we are brought together as a community, our voice becomes much more powerful and compelling.
The most important and exciting part of winning a Wego Health award is…
As a winner I am invited to be a 2022 WEGO Health Patient Leader Advisory Board member. That gives me an opportunity to get even closer to the action and make sure your views are heard! I am looking forward to getting the details of how this actually works but I have high hopes for what this could mean as I proudly represent you, my fellow brain injury survivors. I hope this will mean I can draw attention to issues which are still not being properly addressed, such as how many of us have no coordinated recovery plan once we are sent home from hospital. Clearly change won’t happen over night, but I still want to try to promote a better future for subsequent brain injury survivors.
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