Raising Awareness Week 2026
Saturday 7th – Sunday 15th November 2026
This important week in the calendar helps each year to raise awareness of CRY’s vital work and to help save young lives.
12 a Week Challenge
For this event, participants are challenged to complete 12 miles to represent the 12 young people who die each week from young sudden cardiac death. This can be completed by walking, running, cycling, swimming or another activity of your choosing.
This can be done over the week, in one go or over a few days, but must be within Raising Awareness Week!
CRY Great Cake Bake
Back for its 15th year, this event has become a favourite amongst CRY supporters and staff alike.
Whether you want to hold a bake sale at your school, university, workplace or in your local community; we are excited to bake with you once again this year, and have all the resources to help you once you register.
Display or distribute posters and leaflets in your local area
These posters have information on each area of CRY’s work; our support services, research, screening programme and efforts to raise awareness. There are also posters containing key statistics about CRY and Young Sudden Cardiac Death (YSCD), which help highlight just how significant this issue is and the progress we are making to prevent it.
Sharing posts on social media
Helping to raise awareness can be as simple as sharing a post from any of our social media accounts, or making your own using our resources linked here. We have put together videos, images and post ideas ready for you to share.
Poster Campaign
During CRY’s 2019 Raising Awareness Week, we encouraged our supporters to help raise awareness in their local communities, sports clubs, social clubs, schools and community notice boards by participating in our new poster campaign. Over 350 poster packs were sent out during Raising Awareness Week all across the UK.
These posters have information on each area of CRY’s work: our support services, research, screening programme, and efforts to raise awareness. There are also posters containing key statistics about CRY and young sudden cardiac death, which help highlight just how significant this issue is and the progress we are making to prevent it.
My Pledge
As part of raising awareness week CRY us asking its supporters to contact their local MP. Contacting your MP to let them know about your experience is a really powerful way of raising awareness.
CRY is urging MPs to support the development of a National Strategy for the Prevention of Young Sudden Cardiac Death to help save young lives. Current UK policies are contradictory, with current guidelines based on inconsistent assessments of the incidence, methods of diagnosis and management of cardiac conditions in young people. The UK needs a national strategy to ensure the guidelines and policies to prevent young sudden cardiac death are consistent.
The first stage of a national strategy should be to correctly acknowledge the incidence and impact of these deaths.
Sharing your stories about why you are supporting CRY helps to explain the devastating impact that young sudden cardiac deaths have on the family, friends and community. It is vital that MPs hear directly from their constituents, as well as from CRY.