About us
History
This site was started by the Barrett's Wessex charity and originally hosted links to all UK based Barrett's support groups. However, the Covid pandemic meant physical meetings in Southampton, Lymington, Bournemouth, Salisbury, Bognor, Bath, Chelmsford, Harlow, Cardiff, Plymouth, and others in initial planning stages, supported by Barrett's Wessex and Barrett's Oesophagus UK charities, were not possible and the groups sadly folded and all support went online.
Groups based in London, Cambridge and Basingstoke supported by Heartburn Cancer UK, remain.
If you manage a Barrett's specific support group and are not mentioned here, please let us know so we can include your contact details. Email support@Barrett.org.uk
Management
This site is managed by Chris Robinson.
The following is in his own words:
I am not medically trained. I am an educator. I taught (children and teachers) for 30 years.
Since then I have spent 20 years studying acid reflux and Barrett's. That's not just Googling but searching medical databases, attending symposia, discussing with the top gastroenterologists in UK and more.
As a result, I used any communication skills I may have had as a teacher to put together the results of my learning to compile the encyclopaedia, Down With Acid, which has been described as the "definitive work" on the subject of acid reflux, complications and management. It took months of checking the hundreds of scientific references which I have archived for convenience. It has meant I have been asked to participate in training of nurses and GPs (and was asked by BBC to talk on the subject).
Meanwhile thousands of printed copies of the encyclopaedia have found their way worldwide and it was revised and reprinted a few times and even translated into Spanish, but now is updated online instead. (Though there are still some copies of the last printed version still available (free) for anyone who wants them.)
A hospital group in UK asked me to produce a patient leaflet for them ("Newly Diagnosed") and I have been consulted on the production of others.
In 2008, I started Barrett's Wessex charity with face to face support groups which ran for 13 years before closing due to Covid and which spawned numerous branches thought UK which suffered the same fate. That gave way to Barrett's Patient Support.
The original charity raised funds for, and bought, an RFA machine for our local hospital and started a group in Wales, meeting with Welsh members of parliament to persuade them to provide RFA there.
I was made a moderator of the Barrett's Esophagus Awareness Facebook Group in 2013.
That's just some of what I do to help reduce deaths to Oesophageal AdenoCarcinoma. I get no financial income from this, in fact it costs me money and I have raised funds myself through cycle challenges, though now not able to do that any more.