This year’s ‘World Hospice Palliative Care Day’ saw an outpouring of support for South African hospices. In alignment with the World Hospice Palliative Care Association (WHPCA) theme, ‘healing hearts and communities’, the South African Hospice Palliative Care Association (HPCA) launched a campaign from 21st September to 8th October that took the global theme further by creating a defined call to action from both the HPCA and participating member hospices to the general public and medical professionals.
Focusing on the theme of grief, the campaign asked every person who has experienced grief – whether personally or in solidarity with another, to wear a ribbon on their right wrist. “The last few years have been grief filled. For everyone. Globally, there are billions of ‘the walking wounded’. And we are all grieving. There are those that are facing life-threatening diagnoses, and there are those that are grieving both literal and emotional deaths,” says Dr Ewa Skowronska, CEO of the HPCA. “But there is hope. We can help each other to heal hearts and communities.”
To raise awareness for this very real plight, and to support its hospice members in achieving the same objective, HPCA’s extensive campaign focused on the public at large, medical professionals and member audiences as well as the National and Provincial Departments of Health.
The campaign provided design resources such as posters, digital leaflets, website banners and more to all participating hospice members and partners. The multi-pronged approach included a press release and media outreach. The various elements provided included:
- Campaign hashtags: #WHPCD2022 #WHPCD
- A specific campaign visual identity that saw the use of green and gold together with hands upraised in solidarity and ribbons on the wrists.
- A website page with an interactive map highlighting participating hospices.
- A press release to raise awareness amongst the public and one focused specifically on the medical media.
- Exclusive thought leadership articles published on ‘Daily Maverick’ (a South African daily online and weekly print publication) and Health24 (South Africa’s leading health and lifestyle website).
- Emailers to both the public database and HPCA members.
- Collateral that included a digital leaflet and poster together with specifically designed banners for use on the website and social media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn).
- Daily posts created and published by HPCA across its social media channels for the duration of the campaign. Additional social media activity to highlight and showcase the various WHPCD activities of its members.
- The LinkedIn campaign also included identifying and inviting prominent and active medical professionals to like and follow the HPCA profile in order to leverage off their extended networks and, by so doing, extend awareness across a larger audience.
“The results speak for themselves,” says Leigh Meinert, Advocacy Manager at HPCA. “It yielded great success, specifically from an owned channel and palliative care awareness perspective. We saw high engagement by followers and hospices, with great support from those members who were able to participate.”
Specific outcomes saw an astronomical increase in website activity, with more than 3x the number of visitors when compared to previous campaigns. It also saw an increase in LinkedIn followers, specifically from the targeted medical professionals with LinkedIn engagement, again, the highest compared to any previous campaign. “The emailers also enjoyed significantly higher reads than the industry standard and media editorial had a reach of more than 6 million individuals. Social media was also a massive driver, with all social media channels seeing high engagement, reach and growth,” adds Meinert.
Hospices around South Africa lent their own creativity to the campaign. Hospice Bloemfontein partnered with university hospital and organised a “hospital hop”. They set up a table in the foyer fully branded with campaign posters and flyers including staff wearing specially designed t-shirts. Hospice Bloemfontein used the opportunity to create awareness about palliative care and to sell merchandise along with ribbons for WHPCD22 and they were able to raise enough money to help cover all the expense of the campaign. Says General Manager Hanneke Lubbe, “All of this inspired us, and gave us whole amount of ideas to use into our palliative care project in the Free State.”
In KwaZulu-Natal, the Zululand Hospice Association hosted a book sale day at a local shopping centre and sold beautiful handmade cookies only with their ribbons. Engela Borlase, Fundraiser / Fleet & Stock Controller of Zululand Hospice Association, reported that, “The little children were in AWE with all the lovely books we had available. The cookies had the most detailed characters on and that really sold well. The parents had a good look at the lovely books that were on display as we had a huge variety. We encouraged the parents to buy the ribbons to support our World Hospice Palliative Care Day. It was a day well spend educating and enjoying ourselves doing what we love the most.”
Many hospices displayed the ribbons at shopping centres asking for a donation in return. Others sold ribbons at tabletop and market days, charity shops and partnered with local retailers.
“This was an opportunity to raise awareness and support for our grief-filled society. An opportunity to stand together and allow so many who are suffering to be heard and seen and supported! It was also an opportunity to continue to raise awareness for the role that palliative care can and does play in the support of those diagnosed with a life-threatening or life-changing diagnosis, together with the holistic support it provides to their families and loved ones,” continues Skowronska.
“Bereavement is an indication of having loved. We want the public to know that, whilst grief is inescapable, there is support via hospices and other institutions. Bereavement is a necessary life journey to navigate, but there is no reason to navigate it alone. It is our hope that World Hospice Palliative Care Day 2022 has spread a sense of solidarity, support and common humanity across the country,” said Ms Tersia Burger, Vice-Chairman of the HPCA Board.
“We are indebted to our members and the general public, together with all our stakeholders across government and the medical fraternity, for their constant support as we continue to strive to ensure access to palliative care services for all,” adds Skowronska.
The HPCA supports 92 hospice members in South Africa. If you would like to contribute to their advocacy and education efforts, it is easy to affect a recurring donation via their donation page: https://hpca.co.za/monthly-donations/.
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