October 2015 Progress Update
Here in the UK as the leaves are changing from green to brown and a new season is dawning upon us, we thought it was a good time to update you on the progress of the Life-Course Immunisation Initiative (LCI).
Three key areas of our project have expanded and we can’t wait to share all this with you!
Firstly, we have begun a regular blog which discusses the importance and need for life-course vaccination schedules; this blog is posted under the ‘blog’ section of our website and also on our social media pages. The blog has already helped to promote our initiative to a wider audience and as you can guess, we are delighted! We always love to hear from our members and supporters, so please feel free to engage with our blog posts via our Facebook or Twitter pages.
Continuing on with the theme of social media, CoMO has also created a hashtag for our life-course immunisation campaign; it is #LifeCourseImmunisation. We are actively seeking to gain further support for this initiative across a wider network of individuals in society and you can help to play a part in this too, by adopting our hashtag (#LifeCourseImmunisation), if you post about anything on social media related to life-course immunisation.
Secondly, we are collaborating with the International Federation on Ageing (IFA) in the organisation of an NGO Summit in Brussels in November. This summit will be an opportunity for CoMO to be part of the dialogue with European NGOs and to establish partnerships with organisations not traditionally associated with the meningitis world. CoMO is seeking to create such connections in order to ensure that the LCI is promoted to the widest audience possible and we firmly believe that, the more people on board, the more likely we are to succeed.
From left: CoMO Europe-Africa Coordinator Elena Moya, CoMO Intern Natalie Heritage and CoMO Vice-President Chris Head at our European meeting on 2nd September, at the Meningitis Research Foundation’s Offices in Bristol.
Finally, we are also in the process of building up a list of political contacts, to ensure that we have a secure and continual dialogue with policymakers. We are aiming for life-course immunisation to be a project that is discussed at all levels of society and by creating a dialogue between ourselves, other committed organisations and policymakers, we can achieve such an aim and make a real difference.
On Friday 18th September, CoMO met with our local MEP, Julie Girling. We were pleased to hear that Julie is willing to support our life-course immunisation initiative in Europe and we found it interesting and informative to listen to Julie’s views on life-course vaccination and how she believes that our initiative can succeed in the European political sphere. We are hoping that this will be the start of a prosperous relationship between CoMO and an important European politician.
Make sure that you stay connected via social media to always be in the know on the LCI’s progress.
We will be posting regular updates on our blog, so make sure you stay tuned!
The CoMO European Team
For more information on the Life-Course Initiative please contact us.
Share on Twitter using #LifeCourseImmunisation