Our annual ACP Day campaign is in the books, and it’s a perfect time to reflect on this year’s campaign … it’s successes and challenges.
Each year on April 16, ACP Day offers Canadians an opportunity to learn more about advance care planning. The need is clear: Only one in three British Columbians have heard of ACP, and of that, one-third or fewer have taken any steps to begin. In contrast to these numbers, 76% think it’s a good idea. 
The national theme for 2022 was “Life happens, be ready”. BCCPC adopted this theme and created a campaign focused on the BC context. With a Gen X vernacular, we had the opportunity to take a slightly irreverent take on the theme.
At the BCCPC, we take a two-pronged approach to sharing our message. We work through our community-based partner organizations by furnishing them with a “campaign in a box” that they can use to run their own awareness campaigns in their local community. The Centre also undertakes promotion directly to the public through social media, our web site and, where possible, earned media.
New for 2022
For 2022, we leveraged the theme to expand our target audience to include a slightly younger demographic, 35-54 years. Often a “sandwich generation”, this group is characterized as caregivers of both their children and their parents.
An exciting development for 2022 was our emphasis on promoting our multi-lingual ACP resources. In addition to our culturally adapted and translated information and resources in Punjabi, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese, the campaign committee invited community stakeholders from these communities as well as representation BC seniors to advise and give recommendations on marketing materials aimed at these target groups.
Also new for 2022, the campaign engaged pharmacies to promote ACP messages. For pharmacies, we promoted ACP Day through the BC Pharmacy Association’s newsletter, and followed up with a dedicated web resource link on the campaign website.
Getting the word out
This year for the first time, the Centre used media to promote ACP Day to the Punjabi and Chinese speaking communities. Stories in Drishti magazine and biweekly e-newsletter reached over 28,000 British Columbians. A 60-minute interview hosted by OMNI Television aired 3x across Canada, as well as Viewed over 5500 Times. REDfm radio featured open line talk show host with 2 follow up Q & A opportunities and viewed over 1200 times since airing.
A shout-out to the Creston Hospice Society, one of our community partners, who used some of the tools in our “campaign in a box” to approach their local newspaper. The Creston Valley Advance picked up the story, and ran a two-page feature on ACP Day – a fantastic awareness raiser for the Creston community.
Being social
As the world lives increasingly online, the Centre has shifted many of their promotion efforts in that direction too. In addition to pre-created social media tiles furnished to our community partners, BCCPC saturated our social media presence in support of ACP Day awareness. Beginning April 1, there was a new graphical message each day. The climax of this social media effort was a video post of Centre team members acknowledging the theme, “Life happens, be ready”. This turned out to be one of the most engaging posts, along with a beautifully timed episode of the TV series This is us, which portrayed a moving family meeting about future health care wishes.
Campaign reach
Based on the support from all of the campaign’s proponents and resources – stakeholders, partners, community organizations, disease support organizations, hospice societies, health authorities, healthcare providers, social media, traditional media channels, web pages, online publications – we estimate the campaign’s reach to be over 200,000 British Columbians… and counting!
