One choice. A lifetime of difference. Welcome to Just One Choice
Today, on 9/9 — International FASD Awareness Day, and with a nod to the nine alcohol-free months of pregnancy — we are launching Just One Choice.
It is a campaign about hope, not blame. It is built on a simple idea: when people have clear, kind, accurate information early enough, the safest choice becomes the easiest and most obvious one. And it is designed to take that information far beyond the people who already follow us.
For everyone in the FASD community who has spent years saying “if only more people knew” — this is for you.
What Just One Choice is
Just One Choice is a National FASD prevention campaign built on the UK Chief Medical Officers’ guidance: if you are pregnant or think you could become pregnant, the safest approach is not to drink alcohol at all.
Just One Choice has been made possible through support from Diageo, HEINEKEN UK, The Portman Group and the Scottish Alcohol Industry Partnership (SAIP). Campaign content has been created independently by The National Organisation for FASD, with a creative concept developed by Blurred.
From today it exists in three places:
A new website — justonechoice.info. A friendly, plain-English home for the facts, for people who want to know more, and with links for anyone looking for support. No jargon, no judgement. In addition to the social media assets, we have developed information for posting in pubs, restaurants and other on-trade venues – and we have staff training coming soon as well.
Brand-new social media channels. Just One Choice now has its own Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, separate from our National FASD profiles. Follow, share, and tag away — everything on those channels is designed to be passed on.
A campaign built to travel. Through FASD Awareness Month you will see short videos, stills and myth-busting posts. Over time, we also want this information to appear as posters and screen assets in pubs, restaurants and other places where alcohol is bought and served.
The message throughout is grounded in UK Chief Medical Officers’ guidance: if you are pregnant or think you could become pregnant, the safest approach is not to drink alcohol at all, to keep risks to your baby to a minimum.
Why we are doing it
Pregnancy comes with a million choices, and a million opinions. A friend says one glass won’t hurt. A relative says “we did it in our day.” Online forums are a battleground. In the middle of all that noise sits a person who simply wants to do right by their baby — and who deserves the facts, delivered with respect.
That is what our focus group work told us, loud and clear. People do not want to be lectured. They want to be trusted with the truth.
So Just One Choice sets out the truth warmly:
- Alcohol is harmful to a developing baby’s brain and body.
- FASD is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition — and it is preventable.
- Alcohol in pregnancy can cause more harm than many of the foods and drinks people are routinely told to avoid.
- The choice is not just for pregnant women. Partners, families, friends and workplaces all shape how easy that choice is to make.
That last point matters enormously. Every time someone offers a great alcohol-free option, asks a different question, or celebrates differently, they make the safest choice easier for someone else. That is how a new normal gets built.
Why a charity like ours is doing it this way
We know our own reach. National FASD can talk to the FASD community brilliantly — but the people most likely to need this information before a pregnancy are often not following an FASD charity. They are scrolling other feeds entirely. They are out with friends on a Friday night.
Prevention information has to reach people where alcohol choices are actually being made. A charity website alone cannot do that.
That is why Just One Choice has been made possible through support from Diageo, HEINEKEN UK, The Portman Group and the Scottish Alcohol Industry Partnership (SAIP). Their role in the campaign is reach: sharing our independently created content through their own social-media channels, and in time helping make it visible in venues. Between them, those networks put the Chief Medical Officers’ guidance in front of far more people than we could ever reach alone.
We also know the public expects this. In a OnePoll survey of 2,000 UK adults (1–3 October 2025, weighted to be nationally representative), 75% said alcohol producers have at least some responsibility for making sure pubs and restaurants provide information about the risks of alcohol in pregnancy, and 73% supported posters in those settings, with only 6% opposed.
This is industry helping to get official public health guidance out more widely – and they are doing this voluntarily (while in some other places it’s legislated). That is a genuinely significant step, and we think it is worth taking.
The safeguards we have in place
We know some people in our community will have questions about this, and those questions are entirely fair. Here is exactly how the campaign is protected.
We write it. We own it. National FASD develops the evidence-based messages and the content. Partners can fund, share and amplify. They do not write, approve, edit or veto any health information.
It is governed by policy, not goodwill. The arrangement was assessed under our Ethical Fundraising Policy. That policy requires proportionate due diligence on corporate partnerships, sets a CEO-and-trustee decision route for higher-risk decisions with recorded reasons, and states plainly that partnership agreements must make clear that editorial and strategic control rest with National FASD. Trustees retain the power to decline or return funding.
Our voice stays free. Our policy and advocacy work continues exactly as before, including where it challenges industry or government. Support for a prevention campaign is not an endorsement of any company.
We say who supports us, out loud. We are clear about our supporters and confirm that content is created independently by National FASD.
Come with us
Follow Just One Choice on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Share the posts. Send the website to someone who needs it. Tell us what you think — this community’s honesty has shaped everything we do.
Because it really does just take one choice to change the future.
