05/09/2026
🔶 Our History - Celebrating 50 Years 🔶
Through the Decades - 2016 - 2026 📆
In 2017, NICE published the first national clinical guideline for spondyloarthritis, swiftly followed by a Quality Standard. In late 2018, we launched our Every Patient, Every Time campaign in Parliament, to generate momentum about how to ensure the NICE guideline was implemented across the UK.
In 2019, in collaboration with Parliamentarians, we established the All Party Parliamentary Group on axial SpA. Its remit was to have oversight of the implementation of the NICE guideline. Over a series of 11 meetings we commissioned two national inquires about the implementation of the guidance, commissioned one inquiry into Covid and axial SpA, and brought to light the lived experience of people with this condition, as well as case studies of best practice. It led to a debate in the chamber of the House of Commons on delayed diagnosis, as well as other debates and Parliamentary questions.
In 2020, we launched Act on Axial SpA – the largest programme anywhere in the world that is working to reduce the time to diagnosis in axial SpA. Since that time, our public awareness campaign has been viewed by 7 million people and 51,000 people have completed our online symptom checker. We have provided training to almost 2,000 healthcare professionals, created clinical champions in primary care and provided peer-to-peer support. We established a time to diagnosis survey, working with more than 50 rheumatology departments. The data show that the average UK time to diagnosis has now reduced to 7.5 years.
What was your time to diagnosis?
Read more about our history. 🔗 Link in the comments 👇️
