Help a Heart Week
- A quarter of premature deaths in women are from heart and circulatory disease
- A BHF survey showed that only one in four women saw coronary heart disease as the greatest threat to their life expectancy.
Help a Heart Week
In 2005 the British Heart Foundation called on wives, daughters, sisters and mums to join us in our biggest fundraising campaign of the year – Help a Heart Week – to promote the important issue of women and heart disease and help raise £1 million to fund vital research that could save lives.
Action
Coronary heart disease does not discriminate between men and women. It kills over 50,000 women every year – four times more than breast cancer – and about 1.1 million women in the UK are living with the daily burden of heart disease. Despite these chilling statistics, many women remain unaware of the risks. The campaign set out to raise women’s awareness with photocalls set in temporary ‘graveyards’ which acted as graphic reminders of the pain and suffering that leaves too many hearts and families in crisis.
A TV ad, which aired on 18 channels, and the ‘Fatal for Her’ press and billboard ads gained us a high profile response from the media. Celebrities including TV presenter Gabby Logan and sportsmen Lawrence Dallaglio and Mario Melchiot kept the ball rolling in interviews and articles, while MP Annette Brook tabled an Early Day Motion in parliament supporting the campaign and urging people to join in.
Response to the fundraising call was spectacular. With the dedicated BHF microsite receiving thousands of visitors, orders flooded in for our special Support It! pack, which inspired people to come up with fun ideas for local fundraising. Throughout June, individuals, groups and companies organised over 5,000 community collections and events, from quizzes to sponsored bike rides nationwide.
Our BHF shops put heart and soul into promoting sales of heart ribbons, bringing in an amazing 15% of total funds raised. And Help a Heart Week even made it to the supermarket shelves thanks to our corporate partners who produced special packs which kept the campaign in the public eye – and gave us a donation from each one sold.
Impact
Help a Heart Week 2005 was our most successful June campaign ever, raising over £1.6 million, an increase of 71% on last year, and recruiting 36,600 new supporters.
Next steps
The BHF is committed to discovering more about women and heart disease and will continue to work to raise awareness of the risk among women and the need for equal representation in treatment and research trials.
With heart disease as the biggest cause of premature death in women under 65, we need your support more than ever to raise funds for further research in 2006 that will save more lives.
In 2007 the charity will retain the major elements of Help a Heart Week 2006, while expanding key areas - such as increasing the number of regional bike rides in June and targeting more corporate partners to support the campaign.