Identifying the Most Successful Way of Opening Minds Around Harm Reduction Policy

Situation

In support of their quest to lead the industry in advocating for harm reduction a large, U.S. corporation sought to gauge awareness and support of the concept of harm reduction for internal strategy and to facilitate better communications with key external stakeholders.

Engagement

We designed a multi-method approach to fully address this goal. First, in order to ascertain gaps in knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, and will on the topic of harm reduction, we conducted exploratory focus groups with policy professionals and the medical community. Informed by our qualitative research findings, we created and deployed a quantitative nationwide survey to learn which rationales most successfully argue for harm reduction. Illuminate also led the message development for testing.

Results

The key insights from these combined studies keenly informed our client on the most salient and compelling materials to use when communicating to advance their vision and effectively engage with important external stakeholders, including government, policy, healthcare, and consumer audiences.