We come together every April – families, clinicians, researchers, partners, supporters and others in our global community – to spread awareness into the world about neonatal and childhood acquired Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy. This year, the community theme is HOPE IN ACTION.
Our community is over 10,000 families, researchers, clinicians, and community members strong, across all ages and outcomes, from all over the world, and every day we are so grateful for the many ways we see our community hope into action in their local, regional and global communities of HIE to build brighter futures for more families.
We know all too well the isolation that can exist for our families. Each of us experienced HIE with our children, and we know when we connect as a community, we are Better Together.
We look forward to sharing the many stories of how not only Hope for HIE and our volunteers, staff and families are moving forward the advocacy landscape for HIE, but the many stories in our community that happen every single day, whether that is online or in-person, redefining the word and concept of hope, day after day.
There has never been a more exciting time for the state of neonatal and pediatric HIE in our lifetime, with promise in research, and greater understanding of maximizing quality of life for more children and families. With this also comes new challenges, and we know by digging into advocacy in small and big ways, monumental changes happen!
We hope you will join us in this effort, and have outlined several ways to be involved this April in the toolkit.
We will continue to update our calendar of events and more tools to be used during April! Please reference HIEawarenessmonth.com for the latest event listing.
We honor, remember and mourn our HIE children who have been lost to HIE during Awareness Month on April 20th – HIE Remembrance Day. We ask for your support and help recognize these families.
Use one of Hope for HIE’s remembrance social media frames to show solidarity with our loss community
Post to our WAVE OF LIGHT post that we will start on April 20th with a photo of a candle you are lighting, where you are in the world and any message you have for our loss families
Share posts of our loss families that we will be sharing to honor them, let people know that loss is one of the outcomes of HIE, and bring more awareness to our loss community
If you are one of our loss families, share your story, write a blog post for our website, share a poem, share how you honor your child by contacting outreach@hopeforhie.org.
Pay your respects to our families at our online memorial below.
While Facebook has sunsetted the profile frame functionality, we can still create them through Canva templates! You can access the template below, and we encourage everyone to flip your profile pictures across social media to spread awareness! It requires you to sign up for a FREE account for Canva, or you can download the graphic below, and use a graphic tool, like those in Instagram or Facebook stories to place a circle photo and save.
Tips for design:
Click on Edit as a New Design
Upload your photo
Tap on the cloud part and hit REPLACE
Download as a JPG or PNG and use across your social media accounts, or screenshot to save!
We are so grateful to one of our HIE parents, Zoe, from Scotland who created these beautiful colouring pages that you can download, print, color and share!
