Highlighted Provider Partners (BIPOC)
Origins of the Campaign

Campaign Objective: Addressing SUD Disparities in Allegheny County

Since March 2022, MEE Productions Inc. has assisted the Allegheny County Department of Human Services’ (AC-DHS) Office of Behavioral Health in creating a comprehensive implementation plan for a public-facing campaign, Connect Protect Recover,” to increase awareness of the County’s access points to recovery and treatment services and support. The campaign was formally launched in late June 2024.

The campaign was developed to engage and inform communities and populations in Allegheny County that have been disproportionately impacted by the opioid epidemic. It addresses a range of disparities related to this “third wave” of the epidemic. For example, data show that the County’s Black residents had a rate of overdose deaths twice as high as the rate among whites. In addition, Black residents are significantly under-represented in access (intake) and utilization of treatment services for opioid use disorders, including MOUD prescriptions. To start changing these numbers, the campaign has engaged historically marginalized and underserved families within lower-income BIPOC populations, with a focus on low-income and working-class African American families in the County. The campaign seeks to involve all targeted families and individuals disproportionately impacted by an SUD, using a culturally specific, targeted outreach, rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.

“We want to ensure that vulnerable, historically, marginalized and underserved County residents of color get connected to the right drug and alcohol treatment and recovery services when they need them, and with non-judgmental ease at every possible entry point.”

Targeting Families, Close Friends, Chosen Supporters of Residents with an SUD

The primary target audience of Connect Protect Recover is family (original or chosen), siblings, close friends, and partners of individuals struggling with addiction, including returning citizens. The rationale is that this social connectedness/support (family), in its various forms, represents people who are in existing, supportive relationships with County residents who may at some point be ready for drug and alcohol treatment and recovery services. Through these close interpersonal relationships, our targeted individuals are present, they care, and they are regularly interacting with or monitoring the person misusing substances.

They can be both supporters, influencers and navigators along the journey of SUD treatment and recovery. At the moment of readiness, they can have information about available recovery and treatment programs in their “back pocket” and assist with the navigation process to access those services.

Understanding the Capacity and Capabilities of SUD Treatment Providers to Address Inequities

In addition to Pathways to Care and Recovery, AC-DHS’ currently contracted “front door” through which residents are asked to access SUD intake and assessment services, the County also sought to promote a broader array of drug and alcohol recovery and treatment providers in the County. MEE recognized that willingness and capacity within the County’s SUD treatment and recovery community to collaborate with the “Connect Protect Recover” campaign would be a critical success factor.

Therefore, MEE convened a series of listening sessions in late 2023, with a goal of helping to create overall coordination and collaboration among the County’s funded SUD treatment and recovery service providers. These sessions also helped MEE better understand the realities of the “supply-side” of the County’s funded treatment/recovery service providers, and their existing capacity and capabilities.

MEE realized that in order to successfully reduce historical inequities that have disproportionately impacted communities with high levels of trauma and a lack of trust in mainstream institutions, more training and technical assistance was needed for the SUD provider community in the County. To address this reality and support longer-term sustainability of the campaign’s “supply side,” the campaign offered and will continue to offer a long-needed series of trainings and workshops (with CEUs) that build capacity and staff cultural-competency skills to respectfully and effectively support the most-at-risk and currently underserved residents in effectively “navigating the system” to get to the services they need. This step is essential for meeting the demand for services engendered by the campaign.

Community-Centered and Inclusive Campaign-Development Steps

  • Listening to and Learning from the Community: As the foundation for creating Connect Protect Recover messages and materials, MEE met with frontline SUD staff with lived experience, community leaders, grassroots providers and other stakeholders, and conducted videotaped interviews with heads of BIPOC-led SUD service provider organizations. This helped us better understand the community’s needs, challenges and past experiences with the County’s treatment and recovery services. These discussions continually referred back to the trauma and social determinants of health (environment) that marginalized target audiences face on a daily basis.
  • Message Development: Starting with the campaign slogan, “No Judgement. No Stigma. Just Support.,” messages speak to communities that have been historically ignored or mistreated (and who are experiencing ongoing stress and trauma). Campaign messages targeting families, close friends and partners of individuals with SUD also reflect a protective-factors, strength-based approach, along with the language, style and day-to-day realities of our targeted Allegheny County families. 
  • Testing: All potential campaign branding, materials and messages were pre-tested with the target audience prior to final development and implementation. MEE uses community-based participatory research (CBPR) to obtain direct input from our target audiences, enabling us to understand both the arguments and the effective counter-arguments that need to be reflected in our messaging in order to leverage the audience’s inherent knowledge and strengths, create successful dialogue, spur behavior change and shift social norms.
  • Message Senders: The campaign leverages local families (with lived experience of a loved one’s struggles with addiction), Certified (Family) Recovery Specialists, trusted Community Health Workers (CHWs) and local BIPOC experts in the SUD treatment and recovery field to engage the hardest-to-reach residents by “meeting them where they are” and delivering its messages. Professional staff from the County’s SUD provider/prescriber community are benefitting from cultural-competency training (with CEUs and/or) and technical assistance from MEE to support and enhance their community outreach and message-delivery efforts. In MEE’s three decades of working in behavioral health communications for agencies like AC-DHS, we have learned that the real issue is not simply “lack of access;” the pain point is the (often negative) experiences of residents when they show up to receive services.

Effective Community Engagement: Blending Technology and Human-ology

Connect Protect Recover melds the latest digital media (technology) for scale, with the power of grassroots (in-person) community-based “human-ology” for impact and true behavior change. Because the campaign values and prioritizes community engagement in its promotion of treatment and recovery services in the County, the latest technology will be paired with what MEE calls “human-ology” interpersonal (virtual or face-to-face) interactions with members of a community.

Traditional media and digital/social media platforms were launched in June 2024 to formally introduce the campaign to the primary audience and at the broadest levels of the community. Millions of County families were reached and stakeholders/taxpayers exposed to the campaign branding and key messages in its first year, via digital media, transit and radio advertising, resulting in significant awareness of the new campaign (nearly 18.7 million impressions via social media and digital ads alone) and increased awareness of local SUD treatment and recovery resources. For example, in Year 2, social and other digital media are being used to drive residents to community events and activities that are part of the campaign’s grassroots outreach and engagement, including a new focus on ongoing community-based screenings of the innovative Recovery Education 101 video series, which will be formally released in September, as part of National Recovery Month.

The digital technology (high-tech) is the mechanism to drive as many members of hard-to-reach audiences as possible to on-the-ground, community-based encounters (high-touch) where authentic dialogue can take place. A circular framework then allows engaged residents who have attended campaign activities or events to then follow the campaign’s social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok) in order to maintain the established relationship and/or to seek more detailed information as needed.

Specifically, the reach and impact of the campaign social-media messaging, website and YouTube channel drives families and close friends (who’ve become followers) to in-person community events sponsored by the campaign (listening sessions, intake-facility tours, tabling at recovery events) or one of its collaborating BIPOC partner organizations. The primary goal of these activities is to facilitate interpersonal dialogue with Certified (Family) Recovery Specialists and others with lived experience navigating the SUD treatment and recovery landscape.

Once the targeted families and close individuals participate in any of these offline, interpersonal activities, they will be invited to visit or return to Connect Protect Recover’s digital assets (social media, website, YouTube channel). There, they can:

  • Get Educated, by watching educational videos on a range of recovery/treatment topics, including medication-assisted treatment (MAT), along with video testimonials from local families.
  • Get Resources, including information about harm-reduction tools (like Narcan) to use with their loved ones and connecting with a range of community supports for their own mental health and wellness.
  • Get Involved, by understanding the ways they can interact with the campaign and its community events and activities, such as community screenings of the Recovery Education 101 series, dialogue with Certified (Family) Recovery Specialists and tours of the Pathways to Care and Recovery SUD treatment walk-in facility.
  • Get Connected with specific SUD providers/prescribers/services and options that could meet the unique needs of their loved one.

The Campaign Components to Build Awareness and Engage Communities

The overarching goal of Connect Protect Recover is to drive those in the closest, most supportive relationship (social connectedness) with residents experiencing the highest disparities/inequities to get support for themselves and for their loved one. We want family members to be knowledgeable about available SUD treatment/recovery services, including emerging medication-assisted treatment options, so that they are prepared when it’s time to support their loved one during the access and navigation process into and through recovery. We also want family members to be informed about why and how to take care of their own emotional and safety needs along the way.

Campaign Components Launched in Year 1 Implementation:

  • Establishment of an ongoing 24/7, toll-free campaign hotline (412-325-7550) powered by Pathway to Care and Recovery. Here, family members can confidentially speak with a Certified Recovery Specialist or Certified Family Recovery Specialist to vent, ask questions or get a referral for their loved one to enter treatment.
  • A robust social media presence (posting and ads on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok; content on LinkedIn and a useful campaign Website (ConnectProtectRecover.org)
  • A YouTube channel with more than 61 educational videos about key topics, as well as testimonial videos from local families who have helped a loved one struggling with addiction.
  • Transit advertising on 65 bus routes (interior car cards) and 15 bus shelter locations across the County.
  • Audio ads on streaming and broadcast radio stations.
  • Partnerships with popular DJs on broadcast radio stations to brand the campaign and promote its community events.
  • Partner and/or campaign hosted “Chat & Chews,” small-group information sessions to learn more about the campaign.
  • The campaign’s social media video, “An Original CPR Spoken Word Performance” won a Bronze Telly Award in the Social Video – Motivational & Advice Category, for content meant to inspire and offer advice. The nationally-competitive Telly Awards honor excellence in video storytelling and production.

Campaign Components Launched in Year 2 Implementation:

  • Community awareness and education events at known and trusted locations, where families can watch the Recovery Education 101 video series, then talk about them with Certified Recovery Specialists and other SUD professionals who can explain the steps and set expectations in the treatment and recovery journey. These events also include free Narcan trainings (including distribution of kits).
  • Introduction to the emerging availability of medication for opioid use disorders (MOUD) and medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for substance use disorders among members of low-income BIPOC communities.
  • Explore online outreach and engagement to meet SUD-impacted families where they are, on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, providing a convenient and more anonymous way to get information about treatment/recovery options.

Building SUD Provider Capacity for Effective Community Engagement

MEE recognized that additional capacity-building training in high-quality community outreach and engagement was critically needed in order to fully leverage community engagement as a key (and proven effective) channel to promote the County’s range of SUD treatment and recovery services.

Therefore, it developed a training series that empowers SUD providers and their community-engagement teams with the communication skills, strategies and tactics to effectively present trauma-informed and culturally-relevant information about options for SUD treatment and recovery. SUD services providers and selected AC-DHS staff working in the hardest-hit communities are being better equipped to be effective message senders, by understanding oral communication culture and “why & how” to use culturally relevant communication channels to start and support the behavior-change process among low-income BIPOC populations in need of treatment for and recovery from a substance use disorder (SUD).

In Year 2 of the campaign, MEE will continue to support the County’s provider/prescriber community in increasing its cultural competence, preparing frontline staff even further with the skills to be engaged and challenged by BIPOC families seeking the County SUD services. The groundwork to counter and overcome trauma, disparities and lack of trust is essential. Being able to engage with respect, understanding and empathy will allow the County and its providers to begin to reduce health disparities and address systemic inequalities in accessing SUD treatment and recovery services. These workshops will build their capacity and cultural competency skills so that they can respectfully and effectively support the most at risk and current residents in navigating the system to get to the services they need and deserve.

A series of promoted and incentivized (i.e., with CEUs, training hours) capacity-building trainings (augmented by post-training technical assistance) sponsored by the campaign is helping enable the County’s funded treatment/recovery service provider partners to:

  • Sponsor/host community screenings of the Recovery Education 101 video series to: (1) educate families and other supporters about the range of SUD treatment/recovery options; (2) get specific questions answered by Certified Recovery Specialists; (3) provide safe, stigma-free spaces and social connectedness for families impacted by the SUD of a loved one; and (4) learn about family supports such as Nar-Anon support groups and other mental-wellness resources families may need while supporting their loved one.

  • Further build their internal capacity for community outreach (via additional trainings, by understanding and acknowledging the trauma that marginalized target audiences face on a daily basis and building their skills (and sustainability) to effectively engage those audiences.
  • Access free technical assistance to turn the workshop learnings and theory into practice in their daily engagement and outreach work with BIPOC families who have been impacted by the addiction of the loved one. A key topic addressed in the TA will be educating SUD treatment providers about how to effectively introduce and discuss MAT options with local BIPOC families, including those whose members include returning citizens.
  • Promote the campaign using a community-engagement toolkit, along with a customized toolkit to support engagement with the faith community leaders in the County.