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NHS England

National Diabetes Prevention Week


NHS England wanted to produce a number of short films for use during National Diabetes Prevention Week to promote the benefits of their Diabetes Prevention Programme (DPP) and persuade people at high risk of developing the disease to talk to their GP.

Planning and preparation of the Healthier You project

After pitching against two other companies, Lucas Media was awarded the contract; we held an initial planning meeting with the NHS Diabetes Programme’s Communications and marketing team to ensure we fully understood their requirements for the project.

The films were to feature the stories of people who had taken part in the DPP after being either diagnosed with diabetes, or told they were on the verge of becoming diabetic.
Following our initial meeting with the NHS, we assembled our project team, agreed the stylistic approach for the project and planned the logistics of where we needed to be around various locations in the UK.

Over a four-month period we followed three BAME participants, filming documentary styled footage of their everyday lives in various locations around the country, including Leeds, Bradford, Manchester and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire to show how their lives had improved as a result of the DPP. We also filmed talking head interviews about their personal challenges with diabetes, and took a number of still photographs which were used in a complimentary poster campaign that was sent to GP surgeries around the country.

As we arranged filming dates with each of the subjects, we briefed them fully to ensure they were all completely comfortable with what we were intending to film and how we planned to do so.
We had to be flexible during filming, accommodating changes in the subjects’ schedules and sometimes improvising locations, such as switching from filming one subject at home where the light was too bad, to filming at his local gym.

The NHS’ main objective for their campaign was to increase the number of people completing a diabetes risk questionnaire.


In the first week of the campaign questionnaire completions reached nearly 15,000


a 297% increase on a typical week and double the number achieved during the previous year’s campaign.


During the first month, the main campaign video was viewed nearly five times more than videos posted in the previous month on the NHS England Youtube channel.


The most popular tweet on the @NHSDiabetesProg account featuring one of the videos received over 36K impressions a 5 times increase on the previous month.



Marc and his team went above and beyond what was expected and delivered professional quality content that we used to great effect. 


Leicia Feare - Communications and Engagement Lead

NHS England