Media Group
Public, Media and Website Activities
BASHH has continued to priorities maintaining and delivering an effective and expert-driven press office in the past 12 months, handling a range of sexual health-related media enquiries from leading national journalists and producers. Topics handled have included annually published STI data by the UKHSA - and the increasing rates of infection captured within them - Mpox vaccination, workforce reform and sexual health prevention.
Regular updates have been published on the news section of the BASHH website, helping to showcase the release of relevant educational and training resources, as well as to highlight various BASHH statements on policy and service developments. Several news items have been published each month on average, ensuring members are regularly updated and able to access pertinent educational information.
Significant engagement has also been undertaken with key stakeholders across the policy and political landscape, with the aim of continuing to raise awareness of key sexual health service pressures, and securing support for adopting solutions at national and local levels. Relationships have been strengthened with leading health representatives across the major UK political parties ahead of an anticipated 2024/25 General Election, as a result of ongoing engagement and meeting programmes.
Close working has been undertaken with allied sector organisations to develop co-authored engagement letters and calls to action around critical service delivery policy challenges. BASHH has also maintained its ability to respond effectively to relevant consultations, which in the last year has included input into the Parliamentary Women and Equalities Select Committee inquiry on reproductive health. Steps have also been put in place to ensure that BASHH is able to feed into future relevant Select Committee inquiries, including an ongoing Health and Social Care Committee inquiry on prevention.
Social and Digital Media
Building on the plan put in place in February 2022, BASHH have worked with M+F Health to implement a multi-channel social media strategy. Seeking to professionalise and refine BASHH’s social media channels, an audit conducted this year highlighted marked improvement across all channels, from May 2022 to May 2023. These improvements included a notable 11% follower increase on X (formerly Twitter), a 26% increase in Instagram followers, and LinkedIn followers more than doubling over the 12-month period (increasing from 482 followers to 1,032).
Activity has included the development of a series of topical blogs around key wider milestones, including pieces co-authored by Dr Stuart Flannagan, HIV & BBV SIG Chair, and Lorraine Stanley, CEO of SWAD. BASHH’s social media channels have increasingly adopted a stronger organisational identity, with the development of bespoke visual assets, and on Instagram, the creation of a BASHH ‘Linktree’, a link-in-bio solution that can be used on social platforms.
The success of the 2023 BASHH Annual Conference campaign (creative campaign part 1) in June represented a significant milestone, with over 320 social media posts shared across all channels in the month, reaching an impressive 139,000 people on X alone. The conference hashtag, #BASHH2023, was used more than 1,400 times in the month and 470 people were driven to the conference pages on the BASHH website via social media posts. Plans have been developed for the second phase of the creative campaign, comprising social media advertising and a detailed targeting strategy for BASHH’s Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn platforms