My first 3 months as Director of the Natalie Kate Moss Trust

Whilst The Natalie Kate Moss Trust is now 11 years old, it very much feels like it is still in it's embryonic stages, with the last 2 years significantly setting the tone for what's to come for the charity.

Like any young charity set up in memory of a loved one, in it's infancy it was largely driven by the help of our family and friends, with a marathon here, bake sale there.

However, with consistent YoY growth over the last decade, in 2021, we made a significant decision to fund Manchester University ￡100,000 per annum for 3 years, and so the mission suddenly went up a gear.

Subsequently, in 2022, we stepped up our focus, our strategy, and the trust grew by 147% YoY. We began to see, even more clearly, just how important our work was.

But the statistics speak for themselves. Every year, 3.4 million new cases of intracerebral haemorrhage occur, with 3 million people dying from them. To put these numbers into perspective and comparing them to stats of the most common cancers, Breast and Lung, Breast cancer cases are 2.26million per year with 685k deaths and Lung cancers cases are 2.21million per year with 1.8million deaths (*https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer).

Within one month only one out of five patients will survive after intracerebral haemorrhage, with two out of five patients surviving at 5 years, a statistic that has not changed in 40 years.?In contrast breast cancer survival has doubled in that same period, with four out of five patients surviving at 10 years. We therefore desperately need a breakthrough to improve outcomes after intracerebral haemorrhage.

You can very quickly see here just how devasting brain haemorrhages are, but how often do we hear about them? How much do we know about them? How they happen? Why them happen? What happens after them? What can you do to prevent them?

THIS is exactly why we feel our work is so important and why I felt it essential to dedicate my career wholly to NKMT as full time director and to provide more focus, time and energy to this mission.

As our focus sharpened, we became very clear on two words, PREVENTION and TREATMENT.

Not all brain haemorrhages are preventable, but many are through lifestyle. We therefore want to give more people the information that they need to empower them to take back control of their own health and prevent potential devastating outcomes happening. But awareness here is vital and as such this will become integral to our work moving forward.

However, just like the brain haemorrhage my sister experienced, not all brain haemorrhages are preventable, and so this is why the research at Manchester University is so vital to improve the outcomes of patients after experiencing a brain haemorrhage.

I am so proud of what we have already achieved in this first quarter of 2023, with two new fantastic partnerships starting with I Love Manchester and Lancashire Life, the inception of our new volunteering role 'Champions', a new rebrand in process, 27 runners taking part in races over the company weeks (including runners from Pixel Kicks and Carousel PR), a fundraiser on the way and many, many more plans in the pipeline.

But our biggest mission this year is really dialing up the awareness of brain haemorrhages and helping individuals understand how they can take control of their own lives in order to prevent potential life style related brain haemorrhages. We will be sharing more about this in the coming weeks.

In the meantime if you are a company and interested in how we can partner together, or potentially run a fundraising event for us, or if you are individual looking to become a 'Champion', please do get in touch [email protected]