Bone and Joint Week is over for another year, and what a fantastic week it was, thanks to the support of our members and key stakeholders. It’s a one week blitz of MSK messaging on social media, raising awareness and prompting action. This year we had an even bigger reach than ever. But it doesn’t end there.
We need to keep raising the profile of MSK for the other 51 weeks of the year. During the week there were ARMA blogs on the NHS England and NHS Confederation websites explaining the importance of MSK health to the NHS. MSK health isn’t just about osteoarthritis, inflammatory arthritis, back pain, etc. It affects general health, prevents people being active, makes it harder for them to come home after being in hospital, means managing other conditions, taking medication are more difficult. The NHS might not count these costs as resulting from MSK, but they are; and it’s ARMA’s role, all year round, to keep reminding people of this fact.
We will keep talking about the importance of waiting times for joint replacement, the delays to diagnosis and effective treatment that many people with less common MSK conditions experience, the lack of mental health support and effective pain services. If you have diabetes, for instance, you will almost certainly have access to psychological support with anxiety and depression through an IAPT service locally. If you have an MSK condition, you probably won’t. Our recent webinar showed how to deliver a good IAPT-MSK pain service, presented by people who have done it, with lots of advice about how to go about it. If you don’t have one in your area, ask why not and signpost to the webinar.
ARMA is here to champion the cause of MSK health 52 weeks of the year. We can see it rising up the agenda – look at the profile of MSK in the Prevention Green Paper, for instance. There’s still a long way to go, but increasingly I find people are listening. The wide range of support for Bone and Joint Week and the increasing number of stakeholders who contact ARMA for advice or support is evidence that people are taking notice.
If you supported us in Bone and Joint Week, please keep supporting us. You can help make sure our resources, like our newsletter and webinars have a wide reach. You can keep talking about the importance of MSK in every forum. You can make sure no one forgets that there is no health without MSK health. Not just in Bone and Joint Week.