SAHMRI’s BRIGHT Walk has officially launched for 2024 with hundreds of people already registering and raising much-needed funds to support life-saving medical research right here in Adelaide.

The BRIGHT Walk is a spectacular family-friendly event that will see thousands of SAHMRI supporters walk 11km around central Adelaide past a dazzling array of light installations while raising money for life-saving research.

This year’s event starts at the earlier time of 4pm on Saturday 6 July and takes in the very best of Illuminate Adelaide’s dazzling City Lights activations plus additional bespoke light installations, food, drinks and live entertainment.

And for the first time, the walk will culminate at SAHMRI’s iconic Cheesegrater, lit up against the night sky as a symbol of hope for families everywhere who are facing life-threatening disease.

To mark the event’s 2024 launch, Pete McDonald from the SAHMRI BRIGHT Walk team covered the event distance across downtown Adelaide while spelling out ‘BRIGHT WALK’ in giant letters on his Strava fitness tracking app.

“It was a bit of a challenge making the letters work, and I felt a bit silly wearing a giant sandwich board but it’s all for a great cause,” Pete said.

“It was a lot of fun. Plenty of people came up to chat to me about SAHMRI and the walk itself and some even signed up right there and then.”

Have fun and get fit while raising money for life-saving medical research

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The funds raised by the BRIGHT Walk support a variety of innovative research projects at SAHMRI, including the annual BRIGHT Accelerator Award. The 2024 BRIGHT Accelerator is Associate Professor Chris Bursill, the Co-Director of SAHMRI’s Vascular Research Centre. She’s using the funding to accelerate her exciting research into discovering new agents that prevent fatty blockages from causing heart attacks.

“My ultimate goal is to progress my team’s lab-based discoveries into the clinic where they can make a real impact to improve how we prevent and identify heart disease,” A/Prof Bursill said.

“It gives me so much pleasure and pride to see so many people come together for SAHMRI’s BRIGHT Walk, showing their support for world-leading research that is improving health care for people everywhere."