Emily Carr's Health Design Lab Aids BC Cancer/Provincial Health Services Authority Win at the 2016 National Health Leadership Conference

At the 2016 National Health Leadership Conference, the BC Cancer Agency (BCCA) and the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) received the prestigious national 3M Health Care Quality Team Award for a quality improvement initiative within an organization for their Emotional Support Transformation initiative. Emily Carr's Health Design Lab partnered with BCCA and PHSA to design the communication materials for this initiative.

In 2014, the BC Cancer Agency (BCCA) and Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) launched their Emotional Support Transformation initiative. One solution that was uncovered in their focus groups was to create an advertising campaign to promote the emotional support and resources available to patients and their families. They partnered with the HDL for a project to develop designs for communication materials that include elevator wraps, wall wraps, posters, brochures, postcards and business cards.

Following ideation the HDL presented three concepts to BCCA and PHSA staff and patients and their families. The result is the “Every Experience is Unique” campaign and it’s purpose is to motivate cancer patients to engage with BCCA’s key services and resources which include BC CancerChat and CancerConnection, counselling therapies, and support groups. The concept of this campaign is to communicate that cancer patients experience a variety of the same unique emotions and feelings other cancer patients go through. Hence, the title “Every Experience is Unique” and the tagline “Whatever you’re feeling, we’re here to support you.”

The key visuals include framed portraits of cancer patients expressing different emotions and feelings highlighted with bright solid coloured backgrounds. Each image is layered with a descriptive word verbally indicating the expression of the model. The coloured backgrounds of each portrait are used to emphasize positivity even when the models are displaying negative expressions.