May: a month of 'awareness'

acknowledging the need for greater understanding and the challenges to it

Awareness weeks and days and months are allotted throughout the year, a point of publicity and engagement with one cause or condition or another. May seems particularly busy, with Dementia Awareness next week and Mental Health Awareness, Maternal Mental Health Awareness, Deaf Awareness, Dying Matters Awareness, Black Inclusion Week, and International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. It’s Stroke Month, Viral Meningitis Awareness Week, Sun Awareness Week, Food Allergy Awareness, Coeliac UK’s Awareness Week, National Clean Air Month, World Fibromyalgia Awareness Day, and Zombie Awareness Month (fittingly, a tongue in cheek way of highlighting the need for preparing for disasters, such as a pandemic, so that’s all going well). May is also host for Spinal Cord Injury Awareness Day, Tourettes Awareness Month, World Hypertension Day, Action for Brain Injury Awareness Week, Child Hospice Week, Type II Diabetes Prevention Week. It’s World Home Mechanical Ventilation Day, Hats for Headway, National Epilepsy Week, Digestive Health Day, World MS Day, and World Melanoma BRAF Awareness Day. It’s a crowded place of (unmet) need for awareness and understanding.