The first ever World Kidney Cancer Day (WKCD) went a long way towards meeting its objectives of improving awareness, both nationally and internationally. Kidney Cancer Support Network (KCSN) were instrumental in building awareness of the day throughout the UK, with a press release, fundraising events, a social media campaign, and patient interviews. 

World Kidney Cancer Q&A Day was established by the International Kidney Cancer Coalition (IKCC). KCSN are proud to be a founding member of the IKCC and we support this global event, the aim of which was to raise awareness and funds for kidney cancer research. The IKCC ran a World Kidney Cancer Q&A Day quiz on their website: Over 11,000 people from Ghana to Australia visited the IKCC website to complete the quiz and help raise funds at the same time. More than 1,500 people completed the quiz from the UK, which was the second highest country behind the US with just over 3,000 people. In the meantime, if you haven’t already done so, why not test your knowledge of kidney cancer and do the quiz, which will remain live on the World Kidney Cancer Q&A Day website.

The KCSN press release was picked up by two major media outlets:

• The Express ran a piece highlighting the 5 main signs of kidney cancer, and Rose Woodward was quoted as saying, “Making a significant difference in the livesof patients starts by increasing awareness – knowing the symptoms, knowing treatment options and knowing where to find support. Medical experts agree there is an opportunity for global collaboration to raise awareness about kidney cancer – because when we all work together we are stronger and can have a greater impact than we can alone.”
• Channel 5 News got in touch asking for interviews with patients and a clinician to feature in their 5 pm news on Friday 23rd June. Arrangements were made  but Unfortunately, the feature was dropped at the last minute to due other more pressing news items that came to light the night before.
• KCSN has also been working with Reynolds-Mackenzie, a leading PR agency, and we plan to run a follow-up feature about kidney cancer, involving an in depth interview with a patient about the effect of the disease on family life in the national press over the next few days. Watch this space for an update!

The KCSN social media campaign was a resounding success: In June we achieved over 29,000 Twitter ‘impressions’, compared to May where it was just over 5,500 – a big leap! Impressions give an indication of potential audience size. Hundreds of tweets were written and retweeted during June, culminating in a very busy World Kidney Cancer Day! Some KCSN members posted the World Kidney Cancer Day quiz on their own social media accounts to generate awareness amongst their friends. In one case the post about World Kidney Cancer Day was seen

17,400 times and received over 2,000 likes. This demonstrates the reach of some of our KCSN members!

In addition to the social media campaign, KCSN raised awareness of World Kidney Cancer Day through the use of WKCD imagery on the home page of the KCSN website (www.kcsn.org.uk) and a dedicated WKCD page with links to the kidney cancer quiz, Thunderclap and fundraising pages. During the week of WKCD the number of KCSN website users increased an impressive 58%, and the number of sessions increased

60%, with almost three quarters (74%) of the audience residing in the UK.

The KCSN Go Green for Kidney Cancer campaign helped to spread the word with some fun photos of our members with green lips, nails and hair, while at the same time generating some much needed funds for the charity! So far £500 has been raised. Those who donated to the KCSN Go Green for Kidney Cancer campaign received one of our new kidney cancer wrist bands. Here are some of the many images that were posted:

Finally, on World Kidney Cancer Day itself, brave Jasmine Cohen and Jean Wu went paragliding and have so far raised a fantastic £4,500 for KCSN – the kidney cancer community are eternally grateful for this generous donation! Other fundraising events included coffee mornings, book sales, and a lunch party at Guildford Cathedral.

Globally, social media engagement with the IKCC was increased, as follows:

Twitter – Between 2 May and 25 June 2017, IKCC’s Twitter following increased by 46% to a total of 2,327 followers.  Engagement on Twitter during the time period achieved nearly 200,000 impressions.

Facebook – Between 2 May and 25 June 2017, IKCC’s Facebook community increased by 96% to a total of 9,032 likes.  Engagement on Facebook during the time period achieved a reach of nearly 95,000 people.

Thunderclap – the virtual online flash mob, coordinated social posts on World Kidney Cancer Q&A Day, which resulted in a combined social media reach of over 230,000.

A global press release from IKCC announcing World Kidney Cancer Q&A Day was shared around the world in 12 languages and posted to 439 news websites with a potential combined audience of 81.6 million people.

World Kidney Cancer Day has not only helped to raise awareness of this devastating disease on a global basis, but has also helped to highlight the valuable work of the KCSN supporting patients and families with kidney cancer throughout the UK. It has also helped to raise some much needed funds for the KCSN, and we are especially grateful to the sponsors of this event in the UK for helping to make the day a great success:

Bristol-Myers Squibb and Ipsen have provided part funding for this campaign but have had no editorial input into the programme or content of the campaign.