Pizza (and Other Ideas for Raising Epilepsy Awareness)

I’m in Long Beach, CA at the Epilepsy Foundation’s annual Leadership Conference.  The meeting provides skill-building workshops for staff from the organization’s 50 affiliates and national office.

I led two sessions, including one on the upcoming National Epilepsy Awareness Month (November).  Our goal is to make 1 million Americans “Seizure Smart.”

My message: Stop relying on the “mass media” in to raise awareness about epilepsy.  Focus on getting people with epilepsy to spread the word. That means DIY (do it yourself).

“Grassroots” conversations are so more effective than the mass media.  They’re more persuasive, and they stand out from the 3,000 marketing messages we receive every day.  That’s more than 1 million messages a year!

During our brainstorm session, we came up with three great ways you can put the Foundation’s Seizure Smart Quiz in people’s hands:

1. Ask your local pizza parlor to tape the Seizure Smart Quiz on every box that leaves the store in November (other merchants can put them in bags).
2. Distribute the Seizure Smart Quiz to everyone at work, school, church and anywhere else you can imagine.
3. On Election Day (November 2nd), recruit a few people to hand out the Seizure Smart Quiz at your local polling location.

By doing these three things, any person can easily reach 250 or more people.   And with 3 million people affected by epilepsy, we should have no problem finding 4,000 people to take action and reach our goal.

Got any more bright ideas?  Send ’em my way!