News from the Chief Executive

Thank you for everything that you continue to do to support CRY and raise awareness within your local communities. Included in this section are a number of media stories from May to August, as well as information about some of CRY’s events in this period.

June

Webinar on exercise during COVID-19 June 15

CRY has shared a range of information and advice on our website on all aspects of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and we also held a webinar in June that gave people the opportunity to hear directly from some of our doctors.

The webinar, “Guidance for ‘Safe Exercise’ in the COVIDera and how to prepare for a return to sport”, featured a talk from CRY Consultant Cardiologist Professor Sanjay Sharma on the facts and fiction of exercise in the COVID era, a talk from Professor Mathew Wilson on how to train and return to exercise, and a presentation from Dr Michael Papadakis looking at cardiac evaluation before returning to sport which brought the webinar to a close.

You can watch the full recording of all the presentations in the video above.

Professor Sanjay Sharma interviewed on Sunrise Radio June 22

Professor Sharma was interviewed on Sunrise Radio to talk about a variety of topics, from how he first got started with CRY, to the importance of cardiac screening.

“I first became involved with CRY in 1996 when I was a middle grade doctor at St George’s Hospital, carrying out research in heart muscle diseases that cause deaths in apparently young healthy people, including athletes,” Sanjay began. “At that point I met a great woman called Alison Cox, who was the former Chief Executive of CRY. She was committed to diagnosing silent heart diseases in young athletes, because these are the sort of people that made the newspapers.”

Sanjay went on to talk about how Alison’s connections with the Lawn Tennis Association helped tennis become the first sport where athletes were screened in this country, and how screening in other sports expanded and how his research developed.

“I was quite staggered when it became clear that there were at least 600 deaths in England and Wales each year. That’s around 12 per week, and it doesn’t sound like a lot, especially with this COVID-19 pandemic. But if we consider that each one of them lost between 50 and 70 years of life, then it becomes a very tragic statistic... And over the past 20 years I noticed that we’ve made major strides in reducing heart disease in the UK, and this is resulting in fewer heart attacks and fewer deaths from heart disease. But these benefits have really only been translated to into a longer lifespan in middle aged and older individuals. We’ve not really done very much to reduce the risk of sudden death in young people.”

Sanjay explained how CRY’s research and screening programme has helped transform our understanding of young sudden cardiac death, and also talked a bit about his personal and professional background. He’s been an incredibly important part of CRY over the last two

decades, and our research and screening programme couldn’t have developed in nearly the same way without him. You can listen to the full interview by playing the video on the left.

Sue Dewhirst interviewed on BBC Radio Shropshire June 25

Sue Dewhirst has been supporting CRY since the sudden death of her son, Matthew, in 2012. She went on BBC Radio Shropshire to share her story, and to talk about how people can continue to help CRY during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like CRY and all of our supporters, Sue was impacted and also had four of her CRY screening events postponed because of it.

“Well, for many years they couldn’t find the issue, because his heart looked perfectly normal,” Sue explained when talking about what was wrong with Matthew’s heart. “But we donated his heart so the research team now at St George’s Hospital, Tooting have, through new research, found that he has actually got a genetic fault. It would have shown up as an electrical fault.”

With the Virtual Heart of London Bridges Walk just a few days away at the time, Sue also helped promote the event.

To learn more about how you can help raise awareness online, please go to CRY’s website here.

CRY Virtual Heart of London Bridges Walk June 28

While the typical kind of Heart of London Bridges Walk that we had planned to help mark CRY’s 25th year unfortunately couldn’t go ahead due to the ongoing pandemic, this year’s event was still a special day. As we were unable to gather in person to walk in memory and support of young people, we organised the Virtual Heart of London Bridges Walk. This gave people the opportunity to still complete their own walk in their different areas of the UK, with over 300 people pre-registering to take part and many more joining in on the day. Speeches from CRY Founder Alison Cox, Professor Mary Sheppard from the CRY Centre for Cardiac Pathology, Professor Sanjay Sharma and I were broadcast live on Facebook and YouTube, followed by a 2-minute silence.

We also turned the homepage of the CRY website into a message wall, where over 200 people uploaded photos and messages to remember those they have lost.

We are so grateful for everyone who took part despite the different circumstances, and for helping this event to be special as always. To read the full write-up of the event, turn to page 12.

July

Mark Maguire interviewed on BBC Radio Cumbria July 3

CRY’s supporters have been creative in their efforts to keep raising funds and awareness in 2020. Mark Maguire wanted to support CRY in memory of his close friend and fellow cyclist Ben Forsyth, who died suddenly in 2018, and came up with a massive challenge. Mark decided to run 30 marathons in 30 days, and raised thousands of pounds and awareness for CRY along the way. He also went on BBC Radio Cumbria to talk about his challenge and spread word of CRY.

“It’s more than just the donations, and it was inspiring people, getting people out and running, getting people laughing and happy and I loved it,” Mark said. “I loved seeing that. I never thought I could do that and I never thought I would have done that in this. It was a challenge for me and I wanted to challenge myself and see what I could do, mentally and physically. I really enjoyed actually pushing myself, getting money for CRY and stuff like that... This is the biggest win I could ever get.”

We are so grateful to all of our supporters for going above and beyond to come up with new ways to support CRY. If you would like suggestions on how you can get involved and fundraise, you can visit our website here.