Take & Tell

Take & Tell is a campaign launched in spring 2015 to generate visibility and understanding of pharmacovigilance worldwide. Pharmacovigilance means monitoring and reporting the effects of medicines, especially of their adverse reactions to improve patient care and safety. It is an important, yet less known topic in global health.

The campaign goal was to:

• Promote pharmacovigilance as part of a more holistic approach to health and well-being as well as create awareness about drug and medicine safety
• Make the dialogue between a doctor and a patient easier
• Support patients and health professionals in taking a more active role in reporting adverse drug reactions

Approach

The Take & Tell communications campaign aimed to make pharmacovigilance – monitoring, assessing and understanding adverse effects, or other drug-related problems – into an easily understood, household name.

The campaign seeked to change the way people view the process of taking medicines and to facilitate dialogue between the health care provider and patient. The Take & Tell toolkit Scope developed as a part of the campaign, provides concrete tools for to discuss, monitor and report adverse drug reactions, enabling people to be more involved in managing their own health.

Campaign components

• Building an online campaign platform
• Developing a mobile app for self-monitoring
• Creating supportive educational material for global and national-level needs

The campaign assets were translated into many different languages, including Arabic and Chinese.

As an additional outcome of the campaign, we composed a Take & Tell theme song with the Finnish soul singer and songwriter Tuomo Prättälä. The song quickly spread across the pharmacovigilance community, where it has been played at professional events. The song has also been heard on the radio from Sweden to Ghana, translated into Chinese, and turned into a reggae-style version for the Latin American and Caribbean markets.

Campaign outcomes

In 2015, the website had approximately 1,200 sessions per month and the app was downloaded more than 4,000 times. People have reported it to be a useful tool when tracking and reporting side effects. The campaign song has had nearly 14,000 views on YouTube.