Let’s Talk Care is a health communication campaign that aimed to raise awareness about Advance Care Planning (ACP) in Singapore among Singaporeans aged 50 to 64 who do not have any life-threatening illnesses.
ACP is a process where individuals plan and share their future care preferences with their loved ones and/or healthcare providers, in the event that he/she loses the mental capacity to make his/her own decisions. ACP helps to simplify the decision-making process for family members and medical professionals and facilitates better end-of-life care outcomes for the individual.
The campaign’s key message was planning for one’s care benefits by their loved ones and some key campaign tactics included producing profile-led videos, a reflection workbook, and organising roving booths at various community and healthcare locations.
Watch the story of 93-year-old Mdm Chan Foong Chai, who spends her free time to volunteer at a Senior Activity Centre, and completed her ACP in the earlier days.
The Highlights
The campaign managed to reach out to more than 750 people over 12 roving booths at hospitals and community spaces such as Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Ang Mo Kio Polyclinic, Bishan Public Library, Yishun Public Library and more. The campaign managed to raise awareness about ACP and increase positive attitudes towards it, where many people agreed that it was important to have such discussions about one’s care preferences. They also commended the team on their efforts and for raising awareness about this topic.
More notably, the campaign also managed to influence people to do their ACP with 27 ACP appointments scheduled through the roving booths. This number exceeded certain healthcare institution’s outreach efforts. For instance, one of the campaign partner hospital’s ACP booth generates around one scheduled appointment a month, but the team managed to generate 10 appointments within two days of outreach activities.
The campaign also garnered six online media coverage on Coconuts Singapore, The Online Citizen, Yahoo! News Singapore, Ageless Online, Caring @ NHGP and DoctorxDentist.
The Memories
Reflection #1 – The Challenges
Long procurement process.
One of the team’s working partners had to raise a purchasing order to partially sponsor the ACP workbooks, and coupled with a long procurement process, the printing of these workbooks was delayed and thus not available for the planned roving booths in January.
This was a missed opportunity as the workbooks could have better encouraged participants to begin reflecting on their care preferences and start their care conversation.
Language barriers.
A proportion of people that the team reached out at their roving booths were more comfortable speaking in their mother tongues. Hence, it was slightly difficult for the team to explain ACP to them but nevertheless, the team tried to learn the terminology and explained it in Mandarin and Malay as best as they could.
Taboo conversation topic.
With a sensitive and possibly taboo topic like ACP, there were people who felt offended or sceptical about the campaign’s message, because they felt uncomfortable thinking about their end-of-life care preferences and talking about it because they are still young and healthy. This made it difficult for the team to reach out to their target audience.
Reflection #2 – The Takeaways
Choose a topic that resonates with the team greatly.
ACP is a topic that the team was genuinely interested in after reading more about it. In addition, one of their team members encountered a personal experience which made this topic even more meaningful to work on, and educate Singaporeans about it. Many people whom the team reached out to, agreed on ACP’s importance and complimented their efforts of raising awareness on something relevant yet not often heard about.
Understand the target audience and strategise accordingly.
The team found that both the use of offline and online approach was useful for their target audience of older Singaporeans aged 50 to 64. In particular, the roving booths were necessary as their target audience preferred offline interactions. In addition, for a sensitive topic like ACP, being able to speak to the audience face-to-face was useful, as one could see and respond to their body language cues and adjust interactions based on their comfort level with the topic. The team could also tailor their explanations to correct misconceptions or simply ask the respondent to think about it. For those who were more ready, the team could suggest booking an appointment with a trained facilitator or passing them a reflection workbook.
Have better time management and buffer additional time in schedules.
Even though the team had catered additional buffer time in their project schedules, they faced a delay in the printing of reflection workbooks, and this may have affected the impact of various outreach sessions. The team could have tried to work more efficiently with their partners by confirming the final artwork of the collaterals earlier.
Team members with good communication abilities.
Ideally, the team planned to have their collaterals translated to the four main languages, in order to reach out to a wider audience. Due to their limited resources and manpower, the team could only translate their brochures and workbooks into Mandarin, which was a pity as it limited the outreach.
The team could have budgetted for translation services and recruited volunteers who are well versed in other languages, in order to reach a wider target audience.
Being versatile and adaptable to change.
Initially, the team’s main strategy at their outreach events was to encourage ACP uptake through the distribution of workbooks, as this was a softer approach in getting Singaporeans to reflect about their values, beliefs and preferences, rather than get them to sign up for ACP appointments immediately.
As there was a delay in the printing of workbooks, the team had to re-strategise and focus their efforts on the magnetic reflection activity, in order to get people started on their care conversations in the earlier outreach sessions.
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