Delegate: Dr. Samson Khachatryan
Affiliations: Armenian Sleep Disorders Association
Activity:
Armenian Sleep Disorders Association
World Sleep Day 2017
Activity Report
“The Sleep Marathon”
Dr. Samson Khachatryan as a long-lasting delegate to the World Sleep Day activities in Armenia and his younger colleagues were keen to organize another sleep awareness day which turned out to be a whole day marathon. With the resources of Armenian Sleep Disorders Association and Somnus Sleep and Movement Disorders Clinic an overall aim was to boost media environment with the information on sleep importance, sleep hygiene and sleep disorders. Also active promotion was initiated via Armenian Facebook pages. The main commandments of WSD and this year’s slogan where widely distributed. To be mentioned separately is that the slogan was very “catchy” and both journalists and TV staff were widely interested in the topic also because of it.
10:30AM
The marathon started in the morning of March 17th, when Dr. Samson Khachatryan and his colleague Dr. Anahit Darabyan were hosted by the leading morning shows of the two most popular Armenian TV channels, H1 (National First Channel) and Armenia TV respectively. This allowed to have a high impact over a large population of Armenia and Armenian speaking people throughout the world as these channels are transmitted via satellites.
11:20AM
After this Dr. Khachatryan was in time to attend a live “I am healthy” Radio Show dedicated to medical topics on the National Radio Channel. The show’s format allowed people to call live into air and ask questions on various topics.
- Armenia, Public Radio Broadcast: International Day of Sleep
15:30PM
SEMINAR
A 2-hour seminar was organized for general practitioners, family physicians, neurologists and other therapeutic specialties covering main sleep issues. This was a big meeting with high attendance (around 150 doctors) also given credit points from the Ministry of Health.
5:00PM
A prerecorded program was aired on another News Radio station on the same day again including large interview with Dr. Khachatryan covering all the major sleep medicine topics. The program is also a popular health-related show.
- Armenia, Video: Sleep Soundly, Nurture Life (Watch Video)
6.30PM
Finally, Dr. Khachatryan was able to attend also another TV live show in the evening which is one of the most popular TV medical programs being granted 25 minutes of aired sleep information. This program also allowed live phone calls which were quite interesting and seemed long-awaited by the viewers.
These activities despite a low resource used caused high positive impact according to overall monitoring of sleep related activities, requests and questionings that followed. Another positive side is that nearly all media appearances are permanently available free on the web for further watching and sharing. Correct targeted media selection was key to successful implementation of World Sleep Day’s tasks.
Location: Yerevan, Armenia
Date: March 17, 2017
Submitted by: Samson Khachatryan
Short Bio: Dr. Samson Khachatryan is the President of Armenian Sleep Disorders Association and Director of Somnus Sleep and Movement Disorders Clinic in Yerevan, Armenia.
