The inaugural European Hormone Day highlighted why hormones matter to all!

On 23 May 2022 it was European Hormone Day! On this occasion ESE published “Milano Declaration 2022: Recognising the Key Role of Hormones in European Health” which summarises the key messages of the ESE White Paper published in May 2021, and calls on national and European policy makers to better address hormone health in current and future public health policies and research funding programmes.

With the support of nine dedicated Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from different countries and political affiliations, and the overwhelming engagement of our own endocrine community – with more than 60 endocrine societies and organisations also giving their endorsements - the Milano Declaration and European Hormone Day created a strong impact in its inaugural year. Many national endocrine societies also translated the materials and animations, and they are available in the Toolkit for use on www.europeanhormoneday.org to help the endocrine community to explain the role of hormones and why they matter.

With over 1200 tweets during the 12 hours of Monday 23 May achieving 4.33 million impressions, the activities around European Hormone Day at ECE and across Europe gained a lot of attention – the conversation continues still on Twitter! National media also picked up the story and ran it online and in print.

A large focus of the online engagement was around the activities on the European Hormone Day booth at the ECE Congress which actively promoted the Milano Declaration as well as European Hormone Day through lapel pins and photos in selfie frames that people could use to express their support for this new European Health Day. The engagement from the endocrine community at our annual congress was huge – and we hope that we saw you there taking your photo!

We are still in the process of evaluating the overall impact of the campaign, but we are confident that we managed to make our voice heard and helped to secure better policies and more research funding for our community. Please send us your comments and feedback on the 2022 European Hormone Day so we can collectively have an even stronger voice in future European Hormone Days!