Public Health Awareness Campaigns

A public health awareness campaign is one of the most direct ways to speak to local people about gambling harms: reaching people before harm takes hold, reducing the stigma that stops people asking for help, and pointing them towards support that works.

Chapter One delivers and supports these campaigns in partnership with local authorities. Three things run through every one we deliver:

Evidence-informed: built on what the research and data show, not on generic advertising.

Rooted in lived experience: shaped by people who have been harmed by gambling.

Place-based: designed around your audience, your local services, and your public health priorities.

Why specialist delivery matters

When a council decides to run a gambling harms campaign, there are three routes: deliver it in-house, commission an advertising or media agency, or work with a specialist gambling harms organisation.

A media agency can place adverts and get a message in front of a lot of people. What it cannot always do is make sure that message is clinically appropriate, shaped by lived experience, alert to stigma, and joined up with the support people need once a campaign reaches them. Talking to people affected by gambling harms and building trust takes the subject expertise of a specialist.

Campaign impact

When a campaign is built on evidence, shaped by lived experience and delivered with a human voice, it can reach people who would never engage with a standard health message.

Since that first launch, "If Only I Knew" has grown to include a dedicated World Cup phase and a version delivered with Bradford Council. Each time, the same evidence-informed approach has been shaped around a different place, audience and age group, and kept its impact.

[PLACEHOLDER: link, suggested text "Read the full 'If Only I Knew' evaluation"]

"[PLACEHOLDER: quote from Liverpool City Council]"

[PLACEHOLDER: quote from Liverpool City Council]

Ways to work with us

There's no single way to run a campaign. We shape each one around what each public health team needs, from a light-touch steer to an end-to-end programme. Most of our work sits at one of four levels.

Specialist advisory support

Expert oversight for a team running the campaign themselves, or through an existing comms framework. We help with campaign design, messaging and language, lived experience input, public health framing, signposting, and press support. Best for councils that want specialist guidance without handing over the whole campaign.

Awareness activation

A one-month campaign built on content we have already created and tested, adapted for your area. Best for smaller budgets, or a first step into awareness raising that won't stretch an in-house comms team.

Place-based campaign

A one-month campaign made for your area from the ground up: new content shaped by local lived experience, your local data and services, a press launch, and paid promotion to get it seen. Best for councils that want a credible campaign rooted in their own place.

Evaluated campaign programme

Our most comprehensive option: a place-based campaign, delivered over one to two months. Everything in a regular place-based campaign, at greater scale, with an academic partner, before-and-after awareness surveys, and a full evaluation report. A short campaign cannot prove behaviour change on its own, so we measure awareness, understanding of the risks, intention to seek help, recall and attitudes to give you robust evidence. Best for councils that need a defensible, evaluated campaign with university-backed insight.

Talk to us about a campaign

Whether you are planning a campaign or still weighing up how to approach one, we would be glad to talk it through and shape something around your brief and budget.

Get in touch about a campaign