Sheffield babies wear date of death bands to slam inequality
Health Equals, a newly formed coalition of charities, businesses and the public sector, is campaigning to close the life expectancy gap in which babies born in Sheffield live 12 years less than in other parts of the UK.
Health Equals calls out preventable life expectancy discrepancy
‘Lives Cut Short’ sees the identity wristbands of newborn babies edited to show their life expectancy, a figure which stands at 78 in Sheffield but 90 in more affluent areas.
The stark divergence in projected lifespan is all the more damning as it is ‘largely preventable’, boiling down to essential qualities of education, housing, work, environment, and community.
The emotive campaign seeks to motivate social change in the UK by graphically highlighting geographic inequities, with creative agency Don't Panic pushing the message across billboards and geo-targetted social.
Georgia Stephenson, creative at Don’t Panic said: “What better way to demonstrate health inequality than with a newborn baby? Someone who has made no decisions about their health at all but simply because of the area that they’re born in is likely to live up to 16 years less than if they were born elsewhere in the UK. The campaign is heartbreaking because the reality is.”
A custom website serves as the heart of the campaign, enabling people to find out the average life expectancy in their local area.
Credits
Campaign: Lives Cut Short
Agency: Don’t Panic / @dontpanicldn
Founder: Joe Wade
Creative partner: Rick Dodds
Creative Director: George McCallum
Creative: Georgia Stephenson
Junior creative: Katie Richardson
Client partner: Jane Marshall
Senior account manager: Rheia Chand
Executive producer: Jennifer Clare Houlihan
Producer: Chloe Shaw
Junior producer: Ani Bosco
Strategy and engagement partner: Ellie Moore
Brand: Health Equals / @Health_Equals
Head of Health Equals: Carrie Hume
Communications and campaigns manager: Tom Chapman
Senior strategy and engagement officer Martina Kane
Digital marketing and brand officer: Maeve Gordon
Engagement and program manager: Sarah Lawson
Media and public affairs officer: Holly Beatile
Program and operations administrator: Louise Farley