I think reducing suffering is better understood as a desirable consequence of helping people become more fully alive and in tune with their nature, for example the practice of medicine restoring lost or crippled function. You really don't want reduction of suffering as a direct goal. The only way to fully eliminate potential suffering is to eliminate potential sufferers.

This isn't an academic exercise, there are whole classes of people whose goal of minimizing suffering ends up concluding that we must therefore kill people or prevent them from existing in the first place.