Nowadays the media has become one of the main information and education sources as it is widely and most times accessible unbiased. For many causes the media remains the ultimate promotional tool which can immediately raise awareness for virtually anything. This time, the media helped in raising awareness for the Williams Syndrome.

The Williams Syndrome is a very rare genetic condition, and its symptoms are for many depicted from horror books. For those suffering from this syndrome life isn’t too easy. And since most people haven’t heard of such a health condition several media sources have collaborated with the Williams Syndrome Association last year to bring more focus over the matter.

About one year later, Terry Monkaba, executive director of the Williams Syndrome Association is satisfied with the results. She said: “awareness has skyrocketed, for a relatively rare syndrome”. ABC News and 20/20 were the highlights of last year’s awareness campaign. The focus the association got during the campaign kept it in Google trends for several days at a row. Now, the association and the health disorder are back in trends.

If you were wondering how exactly does being in trends help a health association apart from educating people, increasing web traffic hits can change the way investors and founders look at your cause. As a result, last year’s campaign increased the website’s traffic at more than 1,000 hits per day. That meant that donations increased also. As Monkaba points out, now the association is raising up to 35 percent more money than last year.

The campaign was useful to get more focus from the medical community too. Several weeks after the awareness campaign went viral, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development gave an incentive worth $5.5 million to get medical scientists to research Williams Syndrome.

Williams Syndrome is a health condition that affects one in 7,500 newborns. The syndrome is visible not only in the emotional development of the child but also in his physiological aspect. Such children tend to have elfin like features, bad teeth and heart conditions. Add to that the fact that the syndrome also messes up the children’s mechanisms that trigger empathy, fearlessness and ebullience. The patients also feature linguistic and musical skills.