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The Makings of a Stigma Reduction Campaign

People First



“Be kind, everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

- Plato, or Philo, or Rev. John Watson



The exuberance of childhood replaced: “It hurts everyday, I just can’t get away from it."



First Steps


Those of us in the “storyteller” professions immerse ourselves in the stories we tell. We watch for the unspoken, the nuanced, the hidden clues - to gain understanding. And then comes the formidable task of laying out all of those puzzle pieces and reassembling them into digestible morsels - in words, or photos, or video. It's about creating a message that is both accurate and compelling, one that will ultimately resonate with the target audience.


Late in November, I was approached by Imagine Hope Inc., to discuss the production of the creatives (photos and videos) for The Georgia Council on Substance Abuses' www.georgiacouncilonsubstanceabuse.org proposed stigma-reduction campaign. This project hit remarkable close to home. I am not a social worker, or a psychologist, or someone who works in the healing professions, but I have spent the better part of two decades, living with, and struggling with the substantial, life-changing, personal and collateral damage of my daughter's substance abuse disorder.The damage and pain is staggering. It defines our lives.


There was a time when these things were unthinkable:

Seeing my former straight-A student in shackles; comforting her friend's parents as they arranged for funerals; regularly sending money to a prison account; accepting phone calls that begin with, "you are receiving a collect call from a correctional center;" that I would be raising my grandson alone; and that he would share thoughts like, "it hurts everyday, I just can't get away from it."


In some cases indigenous knowledge is more relevant than the learned knowledge of the experts. And this is one of those cases. It is a subject matter that I am viscerally connected to - as I live and breath. Because it has been a part of our lives for the past 15 years.


NEIL'S PROPOSAL - Stigma Reduction Campaign


I met with Neil Campbell, and her team at the Georgia Council for Substance Abuse (GSCA) offices, and she laid out her plan. Initiate a recovery marketing plan that shares a positive message of hope through billboards and video stories. Along with the substance abuse disorder stigma reduction messaging, the campaign would also provide connections to recovery resources.


Neil and the Council’s goal was to canvas the state with localized billboards, that portrayed positive faces of local (peers) in recovery and supported the scientific documentation to reduce stigma. Using the billboards as both talking points, and as a tool to provide a URL link with a video message by the featured person in recovery, it also provided information for recovery services and the Council’s "warm" help line.


The GCSA was supported in this endeavor by the Georgia Department of Health and Development Disabilities (GDBHDD), which divides the state into six region and provides services in both the urban and rural areas of Georgia. Neil and the council planned to place two unique billboard in each region. Two volunteers, local “recovery influencer” would be featured as the “face” of recovery for that region. It was a timely, yet bold move, considering that the recovery community had spent the better part of the past half century largely using the anonymity premise of the 12 step programs.


But the Georgia Council was on-point and forward thinking in presenting and proposing the sweeping architecture for this project. In December 9, 2013, the White House held the first ever national drug policy reform summit that began the philosophical shift away from the “war on drugs” toward a broader public health approach. But change happens slowly. Three years later (2017), the opioid epidemic had accelerated, and more than 70,000 Americans had died of drug overdoses; https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates a rate that had been jettisoning up since the big pharmas began their pain prescription campaigns in the mid 90s.



Support Evidence

A couple of years previously, The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) and the United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to undertake a study of the science of stigma change, and in 2016, the National Academies Press published their book, Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Stigma Change. Along with the book, SAMHSA also provided a Resource Guide, titled The Power of Perceptions and Understanding: Changing How We Deliver Treatment and Recovery Services - “Overcoming Stigma, Ending Discrimination.” https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/programs_campaigns/02._webcast_1_resources-508.pdf

The resource guide listed important research that included “Changing the Language of Addiction,” a memo from former Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDPC), Words Matter: How Language Choice Can Reduce Stigma; a training guide by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies (CAPT).


The document examines the role of language in perpetuating SUD (Substance Abuse Disorder) stigma, as well as an editorial in the American Journal of Medicine, which recognized the importance of language and the stigma it created around addiction, and how it limited whether or not people sought treatment. These important studies and documents, all pointed to the same conclusion. Substance abuse stigma was discriminatory, directly challenged recovery, and added an extra layer of problems in seeking and obtaining treatment.


Neil Campbell and the Council’s goal was to address this pressing need for SUD Stigma Reduction by canvassing the entire State, including the larger urban areas like greater Atlanta, as well as the vast rural areas in the South and the West, via the six regions defined by the GBHDD.


In order to have a diverse range of subjects and more global messaging, I suggested we set up a “call for entries” in each of the six regions, and then set a goal to interview approximately 10 people in each region. The interviews would be part of a regional video library, and a panel would make the final decision based on diversity and messaging. Tag lines would be pulled from the original interview footage and presented to the finalists for review. The final photos and PSA videos would be shot at a studio in Atlanta.





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