World Folic Acid Awareness Week 2021 was a success!

During the week of January 9 to 15 2021 IF celebrated the World Folic Acid Awareness Week (WFAAW). This is an annual recurring week in IF’s calendar to focus on additional awareness activities for folic acid and prevention all over the world.

Especially for 2021 this is a special year, marking not only the 5th anniversary of WFAAW, but 30 years since the Lancet published an important study highlighting the key role of folic acid in the risk reduction of neural tube defects.

This year’s WFAAW event was a great success with the engagement of IF’s Members, partners, active stakeholders in prevention and individuals from all over the world. It truly was a global effort. IF would like to thank all of YOU and in particular IF’s Members for being so active in making this year’s WFAAW event a success together.

Just to highlight the level of engagement, the reach of the campaign activity on Facebook saw an amazing increase of 32,106% on the previous 28 days, and on Twitter the number of daily impressions jumped from 350 per day up to 5,186 during the week of the campaign! Thank YOU all for helping to make this happen. Your contributions contributed to jointly raise the much needed awareness of folic acid (nutrition, supplementation and fortification) and the profile of NTD prevention globally.

Whilst the many unprecedented challenges that we have all faced over the past year may have restricted many of the usual ‘face-to face’ activities and events that we would normally see from IF’s Members throughout the week, the activity online was greater than IF has ever experienced before, with so many Members liking, sharing and commenting on IF’s daily posts, and even with social distancing restrictions in place, some Members still managed to engage in some face-to-face activities.

Compliments to all IF’s Members who were actively involved in a wide range of digital activities. For example, IF’s Board Member Giulia Bizzotto, translated the posters and banner within the IF’s toolkit into Italian, and these were shared by the Member Association ASBI in Italy to support messages to reach an even wider audience. Also, IF’s Member in France, L’association nationale Spina Bifida et Handicaps associés (ASBH), shared news articles, radio and video interviews with members and health professionals, whilst other members including the Association des parents et malades Spina Bifida -Bejaia in Algeria, were very creative and even designed their own WFAAW branded materials and messages to share throughout their networks.

To remember this successful week of WFAAW 2021 a collage was created. See below a small sample of the amazing creativity and activity seen last week.

Once more a thank YOU for your enthusiasm and engagement with this year’s WFAAW campaign. Your contributions and ongoing support helped to make the event even bigger and better than before. Together we can make a difference!

IF would like to thank Vitabiotics, the worldwide partner of the Global Prevention Initiative, for their ongoing support and commitment to prevention.