SHST//
After the Timmins local health unit saw an 82% increase in opioid-related deaths, they petitioned for harm reduction and community rehabilitation resources. The were given the funding to open SHST: Safe Health Site Timmins -- a supervised consumption site and a crucial access point for health care and addiction treatment services. But many citizens had the misperception that the SHST would just enable more drug use and make the problem in the community worse.
​
Knowing that pulling on heartstrings wouldn’t work with the Timmins audience, we needed a message that would catch residents off guard in an unexpected way to bypass the knee-jerk, negative reactions and get them rethinking their preconceived notions about supervised consumption sites. So, we played off the SHST acronym, drawing on well-known “sh*t” idioms to capture attention, and drive them to our website where we would bust myths with the facts on all the things a safe consumption site could do to help the community at large.