IWD: Prevention Works Best When It Reflects the Whole System
Nearly two years into her positive link-up with EPIC Global Solutions, consultant Megan Vanderson continues to make a significant contribution to the enhancement of the organisation’s safer gambling programmes, channeling the learnings from her comorbidities of a range of past addictions, including gambling.
Today, on a landmark international awareness day, she shares her thoughts on the power of reflecting a diverse range of experiences when providing prevention services that meet the needs of the whole audience…
On International Women’s Day (Sunday 8th March), I want to talk about something which is often described as “powerful” or “moving”, but still not often discussed in terms of “essential”: gender equity in lived experience. It isn’t an add-on to prevention – it strengthens it.
Throughout my first two years of working with EPIC, I have worked with gambling operators around the world, delivering training and consultancy services across a range of areas including interactions training, quality assurance services and data-driven interactions.
In addition to my professional expertise, I also bring my lived experience of gambling addiction to the training room, not as a narrative but as a form of insight, knowledge, and professional value. Gambling harm does not affect all groups identically, so prevention programmes designed without diverse insight miss risk signals. Inclusive expertise – channelling the lived experience of women and men from a variety of demographics, so that everyone is covered – leads to better safeguarding outcomes.
Female lived experience carries a unique lens. It holds complexity, stigma, silence, strength, and survival. Something that the industry had longed to further understand. When that voice is present in training, conversations change, the understanding deepens, judgement softens, and empathy becomes skill, not sentiment.
This is something that I am grateful to have witnessed first-hand, and it makes me proud of the work we do. It helps people understand not only what to do but also why they are doing it. Client feedback shows that this is working:
“I think having a young woman sharing her story is very important – relatable to a big audience who might be normally under-represented.”
“Megan’s experience was brilliant, great to see gambling from a female perspective. Best EPIC training yet.”
Lived experience is not about emotive training; it’s about impact-driven change. It helps make better decisions, increase staff confidence and attrition, improves safeguarding and develops cultures of protection for customers and staff alike.
Several leading researchers have uncovered that the main motivations for females to gamble include escapism from things like personal pressures, boredom, loneliness, isolation, anxiety and depression (rather than thrill-seeking and competitive motivations as is often the case for males). That definitely resonates with both my personal experience – and that of my male colleagues for the comparison – which underpins a lot of the ‘why’ that we incorporate into our session delivery.
As a woman in this space, I know how important it is that lived experience is not marginalised or watered down but is valued and treated as expertise. And when lived experience and human truth is put alongside professional knowledge, change can happen.
So, if we want safer systems, safer teams, and harm prevention, lived experience cannot be at the edges of the training. Lived experience needs to be at the centre.
