Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to raise awareness of meningitis since 2015; and how much has been spent from the public purse on raising awareness of meningitis in that period.

Public Health England (PHE) produces a range of training materials for immunisers, which includes information on vaccination programmes, training events and newsletters. It collaborates with charities to support their work to improve healthcare worker knowledge on meningococcal disease, including through the development and distribution of information aimed at all healthcare professionals.

In 2015-16, PHE spent £50,000 on media to raise awareness of the Meningitis ACWY immunisation. A wide range of communications with young people and their parents was undertaken. Media budgets for financial year 2016-17 are not yet finalised.

In 2016-17, PHE provided a £24,000 grant to Meningitis Research Foundation and Meningitis Now, to support their work to increase awareness and knowledge of meningitis and septicaemia symptoms amongst parents. Activities included: inserting 350,000 copies of ‘Babywatch’ and ‘Totwatch’ information materials into the ‘red book’ provided to all new mothers; distributing ‘Babywatch’ toolkit containing cards and posters to 500 maternity units and special care baby units; and a social media campaign to promote Meningitis Now’s ‘Meningitis Signs and Symptoms’ app.

Meningitis Now’s social media campaign generated almost 4 million opportunities to see their adverts (“impressions”) and there were 470,522 views of their videos about the symptoms of meningitis and septicaemia, with the majority of views coming from people new to the charity. This resulted in an 80% rise in downloads of the campaign app. The charity also had nearly 300 new orders for signs and symptoms cards.

Research conducted by PHE in 2016 showed a high level of awareness of meningitis. More than 80% of parents and 70% of 14-25 year olds reported that they had knowledge of meningitis.

The research commissioned by PHE confirmed that awareness of meningitis and septicaemia is high amongst parents but gave recommendations on how existing charity promotional materials could be improved to help parents.