Standing shoulder to shoulder with healthcare workers with Long Covid in the UK
Over the past 10 days or so we have posted several blogs:
- providing details of how Supporting Healthcare Heroes UK (SHH-UK) is and will be supporting and advocating for UK healthcare workers (HCWs) living with Long Covid
- offering information about non-pharmacological measures to prevent covid (re)infections
- outlining stories of HCWs living with Long Covid.
Box 1 provides hyperlinks to some of these blogs.
Box 1: Hyperlinks to blogs
Blog 1 – How we will help healthcare workers with Long Covid – Part 1 Blog 2 – How we will help healthcare workers with Long Covid – Part 2 |
Now that SHH-UK is a charity, the hard work starts now. In this blog we will identify some of the ways we need the help of the wider population. A reminder of our aims is set out in Figure 1
Figure 1: Supporting Healthcare Heroes UK aims
How can you help us?
Fundraising
To award grants to HCWs with Long Covid we need to raise a significant amount of money.
- You can donate easily online with your credit card either as a one-off or as a monthly recurring donation – or if you prefer you can donate via PayPal. Simply visit: https://shh-uk.org/donate
- You can also donate while you shop, for free! SHH-UK is now registered with easyfundraising, which means you can raise FREE donations for us every time you buy something online. Over 7,000 brands will donate to us when you use easyfundraising to shop through them – at no extra cost to yourself! These donations really mount up and make an ENORMOUS difference to us, so we’d really appreciate it if you could take a moment to sign up and support us. It’s completely FREE and only takes a moment. You can find our easyfundraising page here. Thank you so much!
Social media
We are keen to build up our following on social media. To do this we need as many people as possible to:
- follow us on X (Twitter) (@SHH_UK) and Instagram
- like, comment on, and retweet our posts on Twitter
- like and comment on posts on Instagram, adding relevant content to your story
- follow our Facebook page and engage with the content we post, through liking, commenting and/or sharing posts
- tag us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram posts where you think the content is pertinent to our cause, raising our awareness of emerging information, articles and developments
- tell your family and friends about us, asking them to join us on our social media campaign
- link to us on LinkedIn to expand our network and influence.
Joining Us
Could you be one of our volunteers, advocates or story tellers? To enable us to achieve our aims we are looking for people to help us. Additional details can be seen in the table below. More information can also be found by clicking here.
How you can get involved with SHH-UK
Now that we have our charitable status we can start with the serious work of building the charity and supporting those HCWs who really need it. To do that we need your help! There is a role for you no matter your experience level or time availability, from being a trustee with all the responsibilities that entails to simply being available to share our posts online and increase our reach. Details are available on our website but are summarised in Table 1 below:
Table 1: Description of volunteer, advocate and storyteller roles
Role | Description | |
Volunteers | As we grow, we will need volunteers for many roles within the charity. Examples include:
| |
Advocates | We need advocates who can help us advance our mission, increase our funding sources and help solve problems without going as far as officially volunteering. Examples include:
Our advocates, especially those HCWs with experience of Long Covid, will work with the trustees in a variety of roles to ensure the support and advice we are providing is relevant and up to date and can help us fulfil our charitable objectives. | |
Storytellers | Perhaps the most important at this stage is simply telling your story – you can help highlight the need for the charity by sending us your personal stories as:
These blogs can be published anonymously or with links to your own social media or blog. Personal stories like these can really resonate with the public and are essential for garnering support and donations. |
We are grateful to all those people who have helped us so far and look forward to working with many more people going forward.
Feel free to get in touch with us
You can use our contact us page available here, or via email or via our social media channels, linked at the bottom of the page. Sign up to our newsletter below to receive our updates automatically.