• by Les Luchter , Yesterday

Two years after GSK teamed with Lifetime on a nonfiction short film alerting moms to how meningitis B could endanger their kids, the two have now collaborated on a fictional Lifetime original movie with the same message.

Titled “Pretty Hurts,” the film is set to premiere on Lifetime’s linear channel on June 28, with free streaming starting the following day.

“Pretty Hurts,” says GSK, tells the story of a working mom whose high school-aged teenage daughter enters a beauty pageant to win college scholarship money -- when meningitis “suddenly strikes close to home.” (You can see a trailer for the film here, but be warned that watching “Pretty Hurts” could hurt. As the first commenter on YouTube wrote, “So is this a movie or an infomercial about vaccines?”)

Haylie Duff (7^th Heaven”) stars in the movie, for which GSK has provided both financial and content support as part of its four-year-old “Ask2BSure” campaign, which seeks to inform parents that, while many 16- to 23-year-olds, the most at-risk group for meningitis. have been vaccinated against meningitis groups A, C, W, and Y, they may not be against meningitis B.

That’s largely because meningitis B vaccines are now only 10 years old, so awareness levels may not be as high.

GSK and Pfizer both market meningitis vaccines, although Pfizer’s covers all the groups together, and GSK until recently only had separate vaccines – one for meningitis B, one covering the other four types. In February, however, the FDA approved a combination vaccine by GSK. Although the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices last month approved use of the new vaccine as an option, the final decision rests with the revamped Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

GSK openly acknowledges the extreme rarity of the disease, with the website of its existing Bexsero vaccine stating, “From 2011 to 2019, there were 50 cases of meningitis B, including 2 deaths, at colleges or universities in the following states: Rhode Island, California, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Oregon, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York.

For its Ask2BSure campaign, meanwhile, Duff joins a growing list of former teen and child stars now with kids of their own who are raising the alarm about the dangers of meningitis.

Both Soleil Moon Frye (“Punky Brewster”) and Melissa Joan Hart (“Clarissa Explains it All,” “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”) starred in the earlier short film, while “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan have also now joined the initiative.

GSK didn't specify what Gellar and Hannigan are doing for Ask2BSure, but the two have been doing interviews with major media, including a joint appearance on NBC’s “Today” a couple of weeks back,

“I’m proud to have joined the Ask2BSure campaign so that I can empower other parents to speak up and ask their teen’s doctor for more information.,” Hannigan said in a press release.

That goal was echoed by Cynthia Burman, GSK’s U.S. medical affairs lead for Neisseria vaccines, who said that the firm’s content seeks “to deliver impactful content to help empower parents in the U.S. to start the conversation with their teen’s doctor to find out if their teen is missing any meningococcal vaccinations.”