10 years of campaigning for better treatment

• 1998 – Due to her own ill health, Lyn Mynott started campaigning with Diana Holmes under the name Thyroid Action Group. Together, they wrote letters to doctors, MPs and the media to raise awareness of a possible problem with thyroid blood testing.
• 1999 – Lyn Mynott appeared on BBC Watchdog – Healthcheck. She was inundated by calls, emails and letters. This made Lyn realise that this was not just a problem for a small group of people but a huge problem affecting people in every town and city in the UK.
• 2000 – Lyn Mynott set up a Committee and was elected Chair, setting up proper meetings to discuss how to raise awareness and to try and change the way patients were diagnosed and treated.
• 2001 –It was felt that the medical profession and the media did not take the group seriously so the name was changed to Thyroid UK. 
• 2003 – Our First Conference was held in London, which was a complete success.
• 2005 – Formed sub-committee to organise scientific study to show correlation of thyroid symptoms with blood and urine tests.
• 2006 – Started organising fundraising for study including the Three Peaks Challenge and Masquerade Ball. 
• 2007 – Thyroid UK became a Company Limited by Guarantee.
• 2008 – Received Ethics Approval for our Study.
• 2008 – Testing of patients for Study began.
• 2008 - After a very long time of working towards this, Thyroid UK became a Registered Charity.

The Future of Thyroid UK

• Move into our new purpose built office in January 2009.
• We will complete our study in 2009 which we anticipate will show that there is a problem with the blood tests used for diagnosing thyroid disease. 
• We plan to achieve the Government’s new Health Accreditation. This will encourage the medical profession to take Thyroid UK more seriously and will allow Thyroid UK to have its name on all new Information Prescriptions given to patients newly diagnosed with thyroid disease.
• Hold our second Conference
• Increase membership of Thyroid UK Board of Trustees in order to achieve our objectives.

We have set out a formal plan for our continuing development which can be seen in our Annual Report 2008

We couldn’t do any of these things without the support of our Board of Trustees, Medical Advisers, volunteers, subscribers to the newsletter, donors and all those people who have written to us. Thank you all so much for your support.