From Bioglass to the Big Give, anniversaries to adverts, the DRC to a royal visit in Swansea, 2024 has been a busy year for The Scar Free Foundation…
Join us as we look back on 2024 through four Scar Free seasons!
We reflect on a year of research, fundraising, innovation – and celebration!
We shook off the winter gloom and burst into spring 2024 with our first ever radio advert! The 60 second ad was played on local radio stations across the UK, featuring some wonderful Ambassadors raising awareness of scarring – and why our mission of scar free healing is so important to them.
Every year, The Scar Free Foundation runs student electives with our Partner Member Organisations. In 2024, these were awarded to three budding specialists: Cara Salt, Poppy Barnes, and Evelyn Wong. The electives help students undertake a research project under the supervision of a senior clinician or researcher – a brilliant steppingstone to a scar free research career.
In April, we announced new funding for research that aims to understand and ease the devastating impact of conflict-related genital and intimate scarring in the Veteran community. This unique research project is supported by a £300,000 award from the Armed Forces Covenant Trust Fund, as part of their Transformational Grants programme. Stay tuned in the New Year to hear more about this exciting project.
And in the blink of an eye as we flew into May, Richard had been in post for a full year! “It’s been 12 months of pivotal changes and remarkable achievements by the team, setting a solid foundation for the future and underscoring the importance of our work”, Richard commented. Despite Richard’s busy year, he still made time to paint a zebrafish mug at the 2023 Christmas party in a nod to our researchers in Bristol!
Even if the weather was wet, our summer heated up with the announcement we’d be part of the legacy for the 2027 Invictus Games in Birmingham! Over 500 athletes from all over the world will meet at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, the city home of our state-of-the-art Centre for Conflict Wound Research. Director Helen Helliwell’s focus on legacy and initiatives aimed at local communities meant that we were named as a research partner, and we’re looking forward to working with the Invictus community to develop and deliver conflict wound research projects in the run up to the games.
Our conflict wound focus continued, with the development of a research partnership with Defence Medical Services to invest in a PhD Major Harry Claireaux will undertake investigating Bioglass, a remarkable synthetic material with the potential to revolutionise wound healing and bone repair.
Meanwhile, 5,271 miles away, Professor Iain Whitaker, Chief Investigator at The Scar Free Foundation Programme of Reconstructive Research, arrived at the Panzi Hospital, Democratic Republic of Congo. After three days of travelling – including two flights and a road crossing from Rwanda – Iain’s Swansea University team were greeted by Dr Denis Mukwege, a Nobel Prize Winner who has helped over 85,000 survivors of conflict related sexual violence. The Panzi transforms the lives of girls and women, but in some cases the hospital’s surgical team have difficulty treating the most complex injuries. Iain and team, equipped with 20 3D surgical models, helped train Panzi’s doctors in complex surgical techniques to remedy these complicated cases.
The trip, initiated by our Royal Patron, HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh, would spark the beginning of a remarkable partnership in October…
HRH, Professor Whitaker, and Dr Mukwege were reunited in Swansea to kick start SPARC: the Swansea – Panzi Alliance for the Reconstruction & Care of victims of conflict related sexual violence. A meeting to discuss it was hosted by ReconRegen at Swansea University’s new Simulation and Immersive Learning Centre (SUSIM). SUSIM, with its interactive wall technology, offered a realistic look into the initiative’s work, and provided insight into procedures and rehabilitation vital for CRSV survivors. This includes the development and use of ground breaking 3D printed surgical training prototypes – which could eventually benefit survivors of sexual violence around the world.
Also in October, we welcomed clinicians, researchers, and specialists from around the world to The Scar Free Foundation Symposium at the Royal Society. Over two days, the brightest minds in the field came together for an almighty knowledge exchange, further mapping the next steps towards a scar free future. From cutting-edge scar therapeutics to the experiences of clinicians working under the most challenging of circumstances, talks, workshops, themed sessions, and interviews, addressed the past, present, and future, of scar free healing – rounded off by a celebration for around 200 members of our scar free community! What better way could there have been to celebrate our 25th anniversary?
Our introduction to winter 2024 was anything but frosty: during the Big Give double donations week of our Scar Free Christmas Appeal, you raised a colossal £71,219 including Gift Aid! An enormous thank you to everyone who took part. We’re thrilled that our incredible Scar Free community came together to raise such a huge amount – in one week! This match funding wouldn’t have been possible without our incredibly generous sponsors, Harry Hampson, and The Reed Foundation.
Your generosity makes a big difference: it allows researchers to accelerate investigations that are transforming the prevention and treatment of scarring, as well as getting treatments to those in most need.
Whether your donation goes towards helping to fund PhDs or electives, 3D bioprinting ears and noses, supporting The Cleft Collective, improving the lives of conflict-related sexual violence survivors, or enabling nation-wide burns resources, you are creating steps towards a scar free future.
Even if you missed out on match funding, there’s still time to donate. Our non-match funded Christmas Appeal will run until 10th January 2025 – so you can still give the gift of life-changing research this Christmas.
What next?
After 2024, we can look to 2025 with a renewed sense of togetherness and optimism. One of the biggest impacts this year has had on our team is the profound sense of community that makes our vision of a world without scarring one which is in reach.
Whether that was seeing hundreds of people working towards a future of understanding scarring and its implications at The Symposium, or the support shown to our research through fundraising, we can start 2025 knowing that we are in this together – and together, we can achieve scar free healing within a generation.