Tuesday 11 November 2014

Desperately seeking patients...the NHS, really?

The idea of 'marketing' services and seeking out patients for some in the NHS is seen as a bit of a taboo, even for experienced communicators, like myself, who have worked in NHS communications and public relations for over 11 years (and for over 18 years in total).

'Change the way you think' campaign poster
Very often we have great service and staff stories to tell and this can be done very easily through local media and increasingly, through social media.  Sometimes we have an even bigger message that we must tell as many people as possible and we need to turn to marketing tactics to help spread the word.

However when spreading that word is also about a subject such as mental health, it gets trickier again.  For some this is a taboo, something we can't even chat about with mates at the pub.  In fact it's just those people our current mental health campaign is aiming to reach.

Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT for short in the NHS filled world of jargon and acronyms) exist to help people find ways to cope with emotional stresses and strains, depression and anxiety that just won't go away and the overwhelming feelings some of us can be faced with at one point or another in our lives.

Across the country these services get a poor reputation as they're really hard to access due to waiting times being up to a year in some places. We have great commissioners who have ensured these services have good resources so anyone who needs to can get help the same day - you can even join one of our stress management seminars the following week.

But we just don't think enough people know about this service. So we have enlisted the help of the creative types at DS.Emotion and we've been working together on ideas for a campaign to make people think again about mental health services and to think if they could actually benefit from the help and support of our skilled team.

Put simply ,our campaign says to people with emotional problems, those feeling stressed or anxious, "Time to change the way you think" - and for those who access our service, that's just what we aim to do.

It's been no mean feat; in just around a month we've discussed ideas and concepts to really try and help to change the way people think, reviewed and tested messages, designed and tweaked creative visuals and launched the campaign.  In about a month! We're really proud of the work we've created with DS.Emotion and the support we've had from the experts at Boutique Media and from our colleagues in the IAPT team and others across our organisation.  

As you read this, our really important messages are on local radio in Leeds, on buses around the city, at railway stations and on social media - they'll be dropping through thousands of letter boxes around Leeds in the next couple of weeks too.

Awareness of mental health issues has changed radically in recent years, we have a great service in Leeds to help you or someone you may know, so let's all change the way we think about mental health.  


Gillian Neild, Communications, PR and Marketing Manager, Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust

@GillianNeild

2 comments:

  1. A good article outlining how social media can be put to positive use in accessing, supporting and encouraging engagement from those most in need.

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