Száraz November = Sober November – HuMSIRC Hungary

Name of the activity: Száraz November = Sober November

Country/NMO: HuMSIRC Hungary

Program: Healthy Lifestyles & Non-Communicable Diseases

Contact information: contact [email protected] to get in touch with the Activity Coordinator

Type of the activity: First-time Activity

Category: Campaign

Focus area: Prevention of NCDs and Health Promotion

Sustainable Development Goals addressed: SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being)

General description:

We aimed to raise national awareness of the harmful effect of alcohol consumption. With this online campaign, medical students did not drink alcohol for a month and created educational posts for people on Facebook. We also organized a presentation about dangerous alcohol-intoxicated situations.

Problem statement:

Alcoholism is a huge problem in Hungary. According to a global survey conducted by the World Health Organization, Hungarians are the eighth in the world in alcohol consumption. Sadly, we are at the top of the European rank. Harmful alcohol consumption among adolescents statistics: 38% of Hungarian 15-year-olds have been drunk on several occasions in their life (compared with an EU average of 25%).

Target groups:

• General population
• Medical students
• Healthcare Students

Beneficiaries:

• General population
• Medical students
• Healthcare Students

Objectives:

-To motivate at least 200 people through the online space to join our challenge of not drinking alcohol for a month in November.

-Motivate the group members to think about their relationship with alcohol in November increasing their understanding of the importance of realising alcoholic abuse.

-Providing proofread education to our group members about the effects of alcohol on the human body: including the topics of addiction, biochemistry, first-aid and statistics.

Indicators of Success:

-In our Facebook group, we saw how many people joined the group (total of 237) and liked the posts we made: with this, we managed to have a quite up-to-date reflection of our efforts through measurable reactions.

-With the 14 informative posts in 4 weeks we provided science-based and easily understandable information that made people think about alcohol from new aspects.

-We created our posts based on medical books (Biochemistry, Pharmacology, Pathophysiology, Psychology) and WHO statistics as a resource.

Methodology:

The Sober November challenge has existed since 2016 in Hungary. This year HuMSIRC decided to join and promote the challenge together. I, Mirtill Alexa Mészáros (NPO) was the leader of the organizer team with the help of our 4 LPO-s of each medical students associations in 4 cities. This time all of the campaign was in an online form: it made working together easy and hard at the same time. We had countless online meetings before November to create a structure that fits every team member’s idea. Because of the online form, we did not need any financial resources. Our organizing team consisted of 15 enthusiastic members. In November we created 16 educational posts and we had 1 Zoom presentation. The total number of people who joined the Facebook group: was 237.

Plans for evaluation:

We evaluated the success of our campaign by numbers. The online form provided us with a concrete number of likes, members and people listening to the presentation (which was held by a medical doctor at the Pharmacology Institution).

External collaborations:

none