Background
Devon County Council has a responsibility to improve health and wellbeing of the Devon residents and reduce health inequality. They had commissioned a new “connecting or matching enabler” Optum® to deliver the new Healthy Lifestyle Service – but needed to research an appropriate name for the service, which had resonance with three key personas and would help maximise engagement with the new service. These group profiles or personas were derived from a combination of Mosaic and Public Health Devon data.
Challenge
DCC had short listed a number of names for the service and wanted to test them with the three persona groups: Enable me, Support me and Inform me. We were able to successfully recruit respondents from each of the personas to take part in qualitative focus groups.
Solution
We conducted a total of three focus groups with recruitment being completed using agreed recruitment scripts for each of the personas. The focus groups took place across the County in urban areas identified as having the right socio-demographic mix.
This research project built on work previously completed for Public Health Devon where qualitative focus groups had been successfully used to understand the positive elements that make up the persona segments lives, rather than focusing on their problems, which had already been well documented. This information was then used to inform on the development of the Healthy Lifestyle Service specification.
Outcome
The project had very tight time lines and was completed within three weeks. This followed our initial attendance of two internal development meetings to help refine the objectives and confirm the most appropriate methodology to achieve them.
The three focus groups were completed successfully with each of the identified personas with the findings of each group being reported both holistically and by group, by exception.
The report informed on the most appropriate name for the service, which had resonance with the three key personas, as well as providing additional data on the key words, phrases and imagery which could be used to help maximise potential engagement with the new service.
