Public adherence campaigns: Do they work, and are they worth it?
Di Stafford outlines the key success factors for public medicine adherence campaigns
By on May 24, 2011Whenever healthcare industry executives meet together, invariably the conversation turns to the universal problem of patient non-adherence to medication, and the questions arises, “But what can we DO about it?”
I wonder if it was such a conversation that led to the US launch last week of a new campaign to encourage patients to adhere to their medication?
The campaign, called Script Your Future, was launched by the National Consumers League (NCL), in conjunction with an impressive range of partners and sponsors.
Lilly, Merck, AstraZeneca, Boehringer, Pfizer, Sanofi and Schering-Plough are all sponsors.
It’s described as “a multi-year public education effort” and focuses primarily on patients affected by diabetes and respiratory and cardiovascular disease.
At the heart of the campaign is the Script Your Future website, which boasts a variety of useful tools, including text reminders, downloadable checklists, and usage videos.
One of the more innovative tools encourages patients to make an emotional pledge to take their medicines, by uploading photos and printing out a reminder of “all the reasons you have to stay healthy and to take your medicine.”
As befitting a 21st century campaign, the site also has links to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Visible involvement
The short term benefits seem clear. The launch will hopefully generate some media interest and coverage and will result in some patients re-assessing and changing their own medicine-taking habits.
It may temporarily raise awareness of the on-going problem and cost of poor adherence.
And it might make physicians think about their own approach to it, and give patients a reason and ‘permission’ to discuss it with their doctor.
A secondary benefit is derived simply from the process of bringing such a multi-disciplinary team together to create, develop, and execute the campaign.
Stronger relationships, better communication and joint-working among stakeholders and partners together must surely improve the overall approach to the problem?
Finally, this sort of program is perfect for the visible involvement of the pharmaceutical industry.
It’s a ‘win-win’—a big, costly, public health issue, which pharma can play its part in solving while boosting its own sales in the process.
There’s no doubt that this is all good, well-intentioned stuff but, of course, the big question is, Will it work?
Can this sort of campaign approach result in long-term behavior change among the target groups?
Make it relevant
Medicines adherence is a difficult subject to get people excited about, and it’s not a topic high on people’s personal agendas, so you need to find a way to make it relevant and interesting to patients. (For more about motivating patients in a more light-hearted way, see ‘When it comes to adherence, patients just wanna have fun’ and ‘Compliance and Social Marketing’.)
Finding ways to reach those patients most likely to benefit is also a key issue.
Local, face-to-face initiatives are often the most effective, but such initiatives can be time-consuming and expensive to replicate at a national level.
Sustaining an on-going campaign is always a challenge, too.
Awareness campaigns of this kind tend to explode onto the scene with a flurry of noise and activity, but then rapidly lose momentum.
Key stakeholders change, budgets shrink, and the story becomes ‘old news’. A campaign can simply fizzle out.
What can we learn from similar experiences elsewhere?
A similar campaign was run in the UK from 2003 to 2009, called ‘Ask About Medicines’. Although the campaign was generally regarded as a success, it wasn’t without its challenges along the way.
Joanne Shaw, former chair of Ask About Medicines, reflects on her experience: “You have to avoid the tendency to re-invent the wheel. Sponsors and stakeholders often want to see tangible items such as websites, leaflets, and workbooks. It’s harder to raise core funding to pay for management and evaluation of a campaign.”
So what might be some key success factors?
- Have some clear objectives for the campaign, and ensure all activities are closely aligned with achieving them.
- Keep the messages fresh, relevant and motivating. You need to give people a compelling reason to return to your website, Facebook page or Twitter feed.
- Identify what the campaign outcomes will be. What will be left behind to continue making a difference after the initial campaign has ended?
Shaw says, “A sustained effort definitely pays off. You need to think in terms of years, not months. At the end of the day, there is no magic bullet, but lots of little things can make a difference. These sorts of campaigns work best when they are ‘working with the grain’ of other initiatives going on. The extra focus helps to move things along.”
When the Ask About Medicines campaign ended in 2009, it left a legacy of tools and resources for continued use by patients, carers, and heath-care providers as well as a national guideline on medicines adherence.
It’s still early days for Script Your Future, and I wish them every success with the campaign. We’ll watch with interest.
Di Stafford is Director of The Patient Practice, a health-marketing consultancy. She specializes in health communication, patient compliance, and health-related behavior change. She was a member of the Ask About Medicines Advisory Group from 2006 to 2009.
For more on adherence, join the sector’s other key players at Patient Adherence, Communication & Engagement Europe on May 31-June 1 in Berlin and Customer Centric Marketing on June 27-28 in Philadelphia.