The Client
The Alberta Women's Hospital Foundation was born out of a simple, urgent observation: women's health issues in Alberta had no real voice. Launched under the Royal Alexandra Hospital Foundation, AWHF set out to change that — raising awareness and funds for conditions that affected half the population but rarely made it into the conversation.
The Problem
Women's health has a silence problem. Not because the issues aren't serious — because they're considered taboo. Conditions that affect mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends go undiscussed, underfunded, and underrepresented. AWHF's annual report needed to name that silence directly, and make it impossible to ignore.
- Industry
- Non-Profit & Healthcare Services
- Services
- Brand Strategy, Marketing, Copywriting
- Year
- 2022
The Thinking
The silence wasn't just cultural — it was measurable.
AWHF's own survey data showed that women consistently avoided discussing their health conditions, even with doctors. The insight was this: the silence itself was the story. Not the conditions, not the statistics — the fact that nobody was talking about them. If we could make people feel the weight of that silence, the data would land differently.
Testimonial
"The silence around women's health isn't a gap in conversation. It's a gap in care."
The Work
ANVL built the Surveying the Silence campaign around the concept of absence — what goes unsaid, unasked, and unaddressed. The campaign used AWHF's survey data not as a backdrop but as the centrepiece, framing each statistic as a direct consequence of silence. Every design decision reinforced the idea: white space, restrained typography, and language that asked the reader to sit with the discomfort rather than look away.
The Result
The report gave AWHF a campaign with a point of view — not just a data document, but a statement. It reframed women's health as a conversation everyone had a responsibility to start, positioning AWHF as the organization leading that charge in Alberta.
