We Are Undefeatable in Blackburn with Darwen: Catalysing systems change for people with long term health conditions

Launched in 2024, the campaign successfully motivated people to move more and united system-wide stakeholders around a shared message. Its legacy now extends beyond campaign delivery, influencing long-term approaches to better support residents with health conditions to improve their health and wellbeing across the borough.

Blackburn with Darwen (BwD) is one of the most deprived areas in England, with a high prevalence of long term health conditions. Almost 50 per cent of the BwD population lives with a long-term health condition, and Blackburn with Darwen has some of the highest levels of inactivity in the country (34.5 per cent inactive adults), contributing to higher rates of preventable diseases. 

• To reach people who experience widening health inequalities due to their health condition(s); to inspire and encourage them to be physically active to prevent and support the management of long-term health conditions.
• To raise awareness and understanding of physical activity in the management of long- term health conditions across multiple workforces, such as healthcare professionals, volunteers and those involved in the delivery of physical activity locally.
• To share learnings with other places and local authorities striving towards similar objectives, and with organisations seeking to work in a more place-led way.

In June 2024, with support from Sport England and Together an Active Future, The We Are Undefeatable in Blackburn with Darwen campaign was launched, aligned to the Eat Well Move More (EWMM) Strategy was launched in Blackburn with Darwen, brought together by Blackburn with Darwen Council’s Public Health Team with representation across all sectors within the community.

The Eat Well Move More strategic ambition is to provide encouragement, opportunity, and environment for everyone in Blackburn and Darwen to lead active, healthy, and fulfilling lives. The WAU campaign has been embedding within the strategy under the ‘Reducing Health Inequalities’ workstream, and links to ‘Active Environments’, and ‘Supporting the Workforce’ workstreams too. 

Campaign materials were inspired by the national campaign’s look and feel, building on its tried and tested formula.

• Out of home adverts – bus shelters, digital screens in the town centre, bus, and train stations with high footfall.
• Printed publications - Stories featured in Lancashire Telegraph and One Voice Magazine (which reaches 40,000 residents, from ethnic minority groups).
• Posters - Displayed in GP practices, libraries, family hubs, leisure centres, and council offices. Use of QR codes to drive traffic and website redirect for brand consistency.
• Social media - Paid social campaign on Facebook, Instagram, and X on BwD council, re:fresh (local wellbeing service) and leisure centre channels. Partners and supporters were also encouraged to share campaign stories via their channels - the fact that the assets were not council branded further enabled this.
• Dedicated webpage - BwD public health website with a link to the re:fresh (health and wellbeing service) website. Signposting to local physical activity opportunities and national charity partners for condition-specific advice. We created a Campaign asset pack for stakeholders to leverage assets and resources created too.

The following campaign principles were pivotal in the success of the campaign, and forms part of the learning we are now sharing with other local authorities, places, and organisations.

Local Storytellers: 

The campaign features sixteen residents living with long-term health conditions which reflect the different We Are Undefeatable Charity Partners.  The storytellers engage in a diverse range of activities and are supported by a plethora of local providers. Harnessing the lived experience of BwD residents and ensuring that the diverse population is represented within the campaign.

Data Driven: 

Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council enabled the campaign to harness public health data and provided expertise of a Public Health Data Analyst to enable the core campaign team (BwD Borough Council Public Health Specialist, Together an Active Future Campaigns Lead, and Senior Engagement Manager from the Richmond Group of Charities) to tailor the campaign in a hyper-local way.   

The campaign team used data to determine which wards were considered the greatest priority in terms of prevalence of long -term health conditions (LTHC’s) and health inequalities. A complex spreadsheet was condensed into a simple RAG table, and wards were ranked using their IMD score.  The table contained information on ward demographics, priority LTHC’s and qualitative insight provided by local charity Health Watch.  

Understanding demographic and health profiles at ward level, also drove decisions about which stories and ads to prioritise in various places, which consequently made the campaign more relatable and successful. 

Stakeholder Engagement: 

The campaign core team attended various networking events and meetings including Active BwD, Social Prescribing Alliance Group, Integrated Care System Comms, Insight & Engagement and Primary Care Network (PCN) meetings to raise awareness of the forthcoming campaign and encourage partners to get involved, many of whom identified and introduced us to campaign storytellers. 

The campaign launch event was attended by over seventy people, representing a wide range of organisations and some of the local campaign storytellers, who shared their real-life experience with the audience.

Empowering Health Care Professionals: 

The campaign team presented at all the Primary Care Network (PCN) meetings and shared insight from the national campaign. To support healthcare professionals, incorporate physical activity into their patient conversations, a printed version of the ‘Moving Medicine’ conversation cards was hand-delivered to all GP practices. 

Healthcare professionals were encouraged to support the campaign by: 

• signposting patients to the campaign website 
• promote the campaign in their healthcare settings/waiting rooms (posters and assets for TV screens provided)
• referring people to the BwD Wellbeing Service, re:fresh. 
• undertaking Physical Activity Clinical Champions (PACC) training.

The Active BwD network was crucial in sourcing storytellers to feature in the campaign, and their support and buy-in with the campaign allowed us to gain wider reach to diverse groups of people with health conditions in BwD. 

This also allowed us to link the campaign inspiration, direct to local physical activity providers and opportunities – something that we cannot do from a national WAU perspective. This ensured that people who were inspired by the campaign could then find out more about local opportunities, whether that be signposting to the local health and wellbeing service, or direct to local providers. 

Some wards in BwD are in the top 10 per cent most deprived in the country so the stories focus on being active in public spaces, where activities are unstructured and free or very low cost. 

By making the videos accessible, it enabled the campaign to reach people who are most likely to experience health inequalities (for example, long term health conditions, disabilities, impairments, those from ethnic minority groups and others).  The campaign has achieved this by: 

• 50 per cent videos are translated into British Sign Language (BSL)
• two stories featuring storytellers living with visual impairments are audio transcribed
• the campaign website enables stories to be translated into thirteen languages 
• Read Easy formats are available.

The full impact and learning report from the campaign shares the impact on residents, the local system and the key learning we are now sharing with others.

Campaign reach

Media delivery metrics suggest that the data-driven approach to targeting relevant content to each locality has resulted in strong engagement and a low cost of advertising. Highlights included:

• a paid advertising reach of over 1.4 million
• increase in traffic to the BwD Borough Council ‘Active Living’ webpage by 1,921 per cent across a 5-month period
• over 1,100 hours of total watch time 
• advertisements generated views at low cost, maximising the budget (cost per view equals £0.032)
• strong completion rates suggest video content resonated with the audience
• over 33k YouTube video views.

Impact on residents 

Two thirds of residents were aware of the campaign. Residents were most likely to recall social media and town billboards/screens, however posters in community settings contributed strongly to campaign cut through. 

85 per cent said the campaign demonstrated that people with health conditions can be active. Seeing local faces and locations in the ads combined with the motivating messaging inspired 62 per cent to visit the website to learn more. 45 per cent claim to have taken steps towards being active – their most common actions were starting, re-starting or increasing levels of physical activity. 

Within the full report, we also evaluated the impact on local storytellers, which showed that they were privileged to have their story shared and to be involved with the campaign, and that they found the experience self-affirming.

Impact on local stakeholders 

85 per cent of stakeholders praised WAU in supporting local priorities, and 73 per cent felt that the campaign reflected local needs and demographics. 

Through their involvement with the campaign, partners appreciated being able to utilise high quality assets to highlight their services, when usually they may not have the capacity or resource to create these. 

As a result of Blackburn Rovers Community Trust ‘Walking Football’ featuring in one of the stories they reported that the number of walking football participants has increased, some new and others re-engaging. There have also been new enquiries from a care home and an over 50’s community group. 

The S.A.S Rights cycling group has grown and now has more ladies wishing to participate than bikes available. They also report an increase in Pakistani women attending movement to music sessions. 

Impact on the system 

The campaign has helped foster connections across BwD council departments including Neighbourhoods and Prevention, Adult Social Care, Environments and Leisure. Due to the comorbidity stories featured within the campaign, it has also reinforced the importance of embedding physical activity into wellbeing support for those living with severe mental illness as well as dementia, anxiety, and depression. 

“The campaign has brought people together and enabled a shared focus across different agendas and sectors. It has created lots of opportunities” says BwD council staff member. 

Deaf Village North-West provided BSL translated videos for the campaign. As an outcome, they have begun to offer more physical activity sessions including regular led walks and cycling sessions.  Deaf Village Northwest and Together An Active Future recorded a podcast on making video content more accessible, using this campaign as a case study. 

Since the publication of the impact and learning report, the campaign team has conducted webinars and presentations for various networks, including a National WAU webinar, TaAF conference and webinar, Local Government Comms Academy, CAN Digital Public Health webinar, the East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, Brainfuel Behaviour Change Podcast. These events and engagements have reached a collective audience of over 500 attendees, with many more individuals accessing the recordings afterwards. Other councils have shown a keen interest in understanding how public health data has shaped the approach. 

Notably, the national We Are Undefeatable website's landing page, where the report is housed, boasts an impressive 5000+ page views. 

Furthermore, we have received numerous emails from attendees and particularly local authorities seeking additional information and asking further questions, demonstrating the significant impact and interest generated by our collaborative efforts. 

Professor Abdul Razaq, Director of Public Health at Blackburn with Darwen Council, said “I’m proud to say that the We Are Undefeatable in Blackburn with Darwen campaign has been an outstanding initiative that supports several of our key public health priorities, particularly our objective of increasing physical activity among targeted groups that experience health inequalities”.

Since the initial campaign period ended over a year ago, local partners continue to embed We Are Undefeatable to support people with health conditions local to be active:

• BwD Borough Council and the Health and Wellbeing Service launched a small targeted 'We Are Undefeatable' grant fund, so far helping over 250 people with long-term conditions be more active (since September 2025). This is a notable example as to how the campaign brand is living on across BwD but is now directly supporting providers to create sessions specific for people with health conditions and thus increasing opportunities for residents to increase their activity levels. This funded delivery is due to continue into 2026, where there will be additional evaluation to understand further impact and learning.
• Local funded organisations are leveraging national WAU templates to signpost people to local activities and finding new storytellers with lived experience of long-term conditions.
• Throughout 2025 there’s been a regular comms working group with the Integrated Care Board (ICB), council, Health & Wellbeing Service and members of the Active BwD network – meeting monthly to ensure the campaign lives on, that there is an aligned message, a continued drumbeat of comms, and the opportunities for providers to develop new campaign stories too.
• Local storytellers have evolved into physical activity ‘champions’, supporting local health and wellbeing events, sharing their lived experiences with residents.
• The WAU app is being embedded/promoted within their health and wellbeing service.
• Healthcare settings are becoming engaged, with four Primary Care Networks so far promoting activities via posters, campaign assets and GP surgery screens.
• The campaign is being linked with other opportunities and plans across the system, led by BwD Borough Council. For example, it is referenced within the Dementia Action plan and is being linked with an upcoming Talking Therapies physical activity trailblazer project too.
• From the success of the campaign in BwD, TaAF and the Richmond Group of Charities have been working with Lancashire County Council to deliver another place-led campaign named ‘Healthy Hearts’ – taking onboard the key learnings from this BwD campaign, and continuing to localise the national WAU campaign message. The heart-focus was introduced based on local need and population health data provided by Lancashire County Council and the British Heart Foundation. This campaign launched in Summer 2025 and is currently being evaluated to unearth new learnings and impact. The report should launch in early 2026. 

The Richmond Group of Charities Physical Activity Programme Team, including We Are Undefeatable, have committed to supporting BwD in the coming years too. This will involve continued support with the campaign, opportunities to influence national campaign plans and networks, policy and influencing, and leveraging the national campaign’s support offer at place. The Richmond Group of Charities intend to continue to evaluate this work at place, as we uncover new learnings and impact that may then influence others.

We identified several challenges and lessons learned within the full learning and impact report, including:

• Connecting national and local - Due to the success and interest of the campaign, the opportunities to engage and activate the campaign amongst local and national partners increased. Whilst this is a positive thing, it can also throw in some very practical problems, like coordinating times for meetings for all to attend. Other places may wish to factor this potential consequence into their planning.
• Dedicated local leadership - Without dedicated local leadership and a key instigator with the time and connections to engage with local partners, it would likely have been difficult to coordinate stakeholders and maintain momentum. This is something any place looking to run a campaign would be advised to consider – ideally, there should be a dedicated local lead who can devote significant time to the work.
• Time to engage with the healthcare system - This will be no surprise that engagement with the healthcare system can take a little longer, and in our case, we were lucky enough to be invited to PCN meetings over the course of the Summer due to the support of BwD Public Health Team. If you’re launching a campaign, plan ahead and scope any upcoming meetings to engage with people about it – and get yourself short agenda slots where possible.
• Generating local ownership - It was essential that local stakeholders understood and supported the campaign for it to succeed, but we also strove for a sense of ownership among partners, as it was recognised that this would help drive both reach and longevity. As campaigns can move at pace, at first local partners may not have felt as much ownership, but now it is embedded and is being led by local partners (as described above).
• Measuring impact over time - Try to gather measures over time, to track the pre and post campaign activity. This approach can allow you to track the long-term effects, particularly in terms of behavioural shifts among the target population but will require significant time and evaluation resource to achieve.
• Use of video - We aimed to be video-led but realised in some cases that the digital channels that we could utilise did not allow for video. For example, some of the GP surgery screens could not play video. This is an important budgetary consideration, as of course the creation of campaign videos can be more costly than imagery alone. You can be creative with video, and encourage user generated content, or utilise cheaper options to share stories.
• Campaign delivery and storytelling on a lower budget - Whilst people have reflected that this campaign has been cost-effective given the reach and impact, not all places will have a similar budget to BwD. To help other areas replicate this success on a limited budget, consider the following suggestions:
  • focus on the most prevalent health conditions within your place rather than trying to represent all of the WAU national charity partners
  • opt for a photo-led approach, especially when using Out of Home and printed media
  • identify the specific target audience and their preferred social media platform and create content specifically for that channel
  • if it is not possible to create local assets, consider tailoring the freely available national WAU campaign assets and messaging, available via its campaign hub.

Our ‘top ten transferable learnings for place-led campaigns’ are featured within the full learning and impact report too – which link directly to the above lessons learned.

Peter Dutton, Senior Engagement Manager at The Richmond Group of Charities, [email protected]

• full campaign learning and impact report
• TaAF webinar recording, delivered by the core campaign team
• Campaign website 
• Deaf Village and TaAF podcast recording on making the campaign accessible and inclusive 
• follow on place-led campaign, inspired by our work in BwD - Healthy Hearts Campaign website (Lancashire County Council) 
• BwD Campaign pack – to access campaign assets and imagery.