Building and delivering successful anti-stigma programs for healthcare providers

The purpose of the qualitative research was to identify best practices and strategies among OM’s partner programs, to identify key program ingredients for effective stigma reduction, to better understand why some programs were more successful than others and to gain further theoretical insight to the process of building successful anti-stigma programs for healthcare providers. [...] A qualitative approach was decided as the most suitable as we were seeking to understand programs in greater depth and detail, and were also interested in learning about the whats, hows and whys of anti-stigma programming for healthcare providers from the perspectives and experiences of program stakeholders themselves. [...] The analysis led to the generation of a model articulating the process for building and delivering successful anti-stigma programs for healthcare providers. [...] First of all, respondents said that hearing someone’s personal story helps to create empathy and understanding, allowing healthcare providers to ‘see the person behind the illness.’ Personal Testimony Tips The overall tone of the story should be a hopeful and inspiring message. [...] Participant feedback from one of OM’s partner programs that included three different forms of social contact – the screening of a PhotoVOICE documentary, a live first-voice/personal testimony, and a music video from a person with lived experience of a mental illness – found that just over a third of participants felt the documentary was the content element that impacted them the most, just under a