HSJ Awards 2009: Best Social Marketing Project

There was more than an award in the offing for the prize-winning team from Stoke on Trent PCT. Not only did they carry off a prestigious title, they also learnt a lot about how they might develop their work and understand more about the impact it was having.

The project to reduce smoking rates in pregnancy had been running for about 18 months before the award entry was put in. Encouraged by their success with their client group and feeling as if they had embarked on something that might be groundbreaking the team decided the next step was to put the work up for some rigorous scrutiny.

“The entry process itself got us thinking about what exactly it was we were in the midst of doing, the direction in which we wanted to take the work and how we could best communicate that to people who nothing about it,” says Deborah Richardson, principal health improvement specialist. “That level of consideration helped us once we were shortlisted and meant we were able to get across the strengths of our social marketing approach at the presentation.”

“While we were pretty sure that we had put forward a strong project we also knew from our interactions with the judges that there was room for improvement,” continues Ms Richardson. “We were absolutely cock-a-hoop to hear that we had won. But it has also been genuine inspiration for us in terms of taking that learning from the presentation, building it into our monitoring systems and developing a more rounded and robust intervention.”