City of Hope has executed brilliantly on the concept of covering itself. For this, the cancer research and treatment center wins the Best Use of Social Media category in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

By rethinking the content for its Breakthroughs blog and using the blog as the launching point for its content, City of Hope was able to deploy its stories through multiple channels. The focus of the blog has been narrowed to four key topics: research and patient care, patient stories, people profiles, and fundraising-related content. 

A newsroom was established with a team of content creators who were coached on the development of material that would generate buzz and inspire sharing. Each member of the team was given responsibility for promoting his or her own content, which, as the effort expanded, began reaching channels beyond the blog. In fact, one requirement that made tremendous sense was ensuring every piece of content would work in at least two channels.

A strategy for integrating content between City of Hope’s owned-media channels cemented the efficacy of the strategy, which was crafted to improve visibility of the multitude of stories emerging from patients, staff, researchers, educators, and others associated with the institution. In addition to dramatically increasing the volume of content, the strategy has led to mind-boggling results, like an 827 percent increase in impressions delivered by Facebook and Twitter alone, along with increases in followers and subscribers across all channels. 

Even more impressive, in an era when pundits proclaim blogs are dead, City of Hope’s Breakthroughs blog has enjoyed a traffic increase of 734 percent, with 20,000 visitors reading posts each month.
We congratulate the entire team on this stellar entry: Tami Dennis, Randy Hui, Nicole White, Dominique Grignetti, H. Chung So, Denise Heady, Andy Featherston, Kim Proescholdt, and Erica Helwick.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

The topics covered in City of Hope’s semiannual magazine are serious and often clinical, addressing advances in cancer research, the fight against diabetes, and a host of other diseases. 

As its name suggests, though, City of Hope has a brand grounded in optimism, a view the institution wanted to convey in its publication. The redesign of City News focused not just on fonts and images, but on story length, since shorter articles provide opportunities for more stories (any of which could be the best story in the view of any given reader) and are quicker and easier to read. Designers also established a color code consistent with City of Hope’s style guide, with different colors signifying specific service lines, such as breast cancer and colon cancer. As for fonts (the importance of which we by no means intended to diminish), designers replaced long-used fonts for both text and headlines with fresh fonts that well serve the goal of establishing City News as a contemporary publication that would look perfectly at home among high-end consumer publications on a street-side newsstand. The use of highlight colors in headlines to draw attention to key words is inspired. The dominance of people-focused photography that moves beyond tired old grip-and-grin gives this clinical publication a human dimension, while illustrations are employed where they make the most sense to enhance the articles they accompany. A combination of charts, graphs, and infographics adds to the modern look and enhances an already easy-to-read magazine. 

We’re honored to give the win in the Best Publication Design category of Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards to City of Hope, and we congratulate senior designer Kristen Santoni and creative services director Stacy Kimmel—it’s all the more impressive that the work on this stellar hospital magazine was performed in-house, without the aid of any outside graphic design shops.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

Doctors can be one of the toughest audiences to crack. 

Between their workloads, the volume of content they receive from a variety of sources, an attitude of superiority that can characterize some physicians, and other demands on their time, doctors are known for dismissing communication materials distributed by the hospitals where they work or have privileges.
 
Mafraq Hospital in Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) overcame these daunting obstacles with a publication whose goals would seem to inhibit readership: Promote physician education, heighten awareness of recent clinical developments, and improve physician-patient relationships (which can be worse in the Middle East than in Western countries). By focusing on clinical areas and service lines Mafraq provides, along with conditions unique to the region, and delivering this information in short, easy-to-read, graphically appealing articles, not only have Mafraq and its agency partner, Leading Brands, found a way to avoid Practice magazine winding up in the trash, physicians have actually contacted the editors with ideas for stories! This alone takes home the win in the Best Print Publication category of Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

The magazine appeals to native Middle Eastern doctors and expatriates alike. Practice includes a healthy mix of graphics, charts, and graphs, a scannable roundup of medical and health care news, and a calendar of upcoming hospital events, all wrapped in a high-class design that appeals to doctors. 

For publishing a magazine doctors actually read that helps them stay on top of important information and work better with their patients, we extend our hearty congratulations to Mafraq Hospital’s communications and marketing team and Leading Brands’ creative team.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

Everybody, it seems, has to have an app. The rush to ensure that a brand has an entry in app stores has led to tens of thousands of mediocre (and worse) entries, all vying for consumer attention. 

Smart app development isn’t a matter of throwing some resources together. It’s a matter of understanding how people use their smartphones, their expectations, and the mobile moments in which they are most inclined to engage. The American Airlines app, for instance, draws on multiple systems that have never been unified before to provide information at every stage of a passenger’s journey, from reserving a ticket to keeping an eye on efforts to find luggage lost in transit. 

Customized Communications took a similar approach with its Gift of Motherhood app, a new offering amidst the apps available to provide information to expecting mothers. Some apps let mothers track contraction times, some deal with post-partum issues, some talk about maternal care. This meant that a pregnant woman had to find the right app at the right time. Customized Communications remedied this situation by creating a pregnancy continuum a woman can tap into at any point in her pregnancy: Knowing an expectant mother’s due date, the app can deliver morning sickness information early in the pregnancy, for example, and post-partum information after delivery. For its innovative work, we name Customized Communications and MobileSmith the winners of the Best Mobile App category in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

It took only one person using an app development platform to craft the app, which includes educational resources, tips and advice, 3-D videos, a baby development calendar, pregnancy journals, contraction timers, and medication and appointment reminders. 

Anyone developing an app on a limited budget should look to the outstanding work produced by e-learning production manager Heather Noack to understand the role of context in delivering a truly useful app that will engage its users.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

One sad reality of hospitals—especially children’s hospitals—is that some patients will spend Christmas Day away from their homes and families in the comparatively cold and cheerless environs of a care facility. 

While it’s not unusual for hospitals to make special efforts to brighten their patients’ Christmas by delivering presents and decorating festively for the holiday, few have been able to convey the cheer these efforts bring as well as Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children. 

It helped that the golf legend himself stars in this entertaining video that tells a classic story: It has a beginning, a middle, and an end; it sets up a challenge and then resolves it; and it includes an appealing cast of characters in addition to the tale’s hero. There was nothing gratuitous about Palmer’s appearance, since it is through his personal efforts that the hospital is able to deliver care to the area’s children. 

But it was the actual patients and their families who sealed the deal in this captivating video that attracted an astonishing 41,000 views (not to mention 31 comments on YouTube, like the one that proclaims, “OMG. I’m crying. This is so very touching. Thank you, Mr. Palmer,” or the one that reads, “Arnold, you’re the man”). In three short minutes—appropriate for a time-challenged audience—we are introduced to children whose conditions prevent them from spending the holidays at home and Palmer taking a helicopter ride to the rescue. In addition to generating views, the video was featured on home pages of prestigious sites from CBS Sports and The Huffington Post to the Golf Channel and Golfweek, and has been recognized with awards from other organizations. And now the video is the winner of the Best Marketing Video category in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

We’re pleased to join those who have honored this video and its creator, Michael Schmidt.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

All too often, it’s easy for interviews to succumb to the temptation to resort to maudlin, syrupy stories in an attempt to appeal to people’s emotions. 

Far too many of these interviews come off as contrived and manipulative. But a great story that screams to be told that also reaches people at a raw emotional level can have a profound impact. 

Such is the case with Christine Pechera, who wasn’t expected to survive her diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Having always wished to see the Rose Parade in person, her family took her so she could experience it before she died. 
While in Los Angeles, she decided to take one last chance at a cure and visited City of Hope, ultimately leading to her return to health. When City of Hope’s 2014 Rose Parade float was designed to carry patients who survived life-threatening illnesses thanks to City of Hope, Pechera was selected to be one of those waving at parade-goers from the Colorado Boulevard parade route. 

Simply pointing the camera at Pechera would not have produced the emotional impact of this video; it took preparation, including working with her so she could convey her story naturally. The resulting video was shared through multiple channels, including social media and the official Rose Parade website. Designed to inspire charitable giving to the organization, the video produced the highest call-to-action click-through rate of any video in City of Hope’s history, with all views driven by organic engagement via social media. 

We are pleased to award it the prize for Best Interview Video in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards. Produced at absolutely no expense, the video—and videographer Andy Featherston—exceeded expectations. Congratulations on a job well done.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

You know you have a winning entry on your hands when you open it and realize you’ve seen it before—more than once. 

So compelling was this infographic that it made the rounds through social media, not only capturing the attention of James Bond fans (and who isn’t one?), but creating buzz around the reality-vs.-myth approach adopted by The BMJ,  formerly known as The British Medical Journal, and Makovsky Health in their effort to raise awareness of the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption. 

Creating infographics can be a perilous undertaking. This infographic, however, was brilliantly conceived as part of an annual tradition for The BMJ, which uses its Christmas edition to share quirky medical news. Using Ian Fleming’s iconic James Bond novels (not the movies) as its resource, the team of Lee Davies, Jon Florio, and Kyle Kosterich used familiar imagery and sparse text to convey the impact of 007’s drinking if he were a real person. (Bottom line: He would be dead at 56.) 

The tongue-in-cheek title of “The Man With the Golden Liver,” coupled with other referential subheads (e.g., “The Spy Who Loved Booze” and “Tomorrow’s Hangover Never Dies”), helps the infographic make its case for moderation in the most entertaining of ways. To make the asset even more valuable, it was coupled with study materials for additional information. More than 180 articles featured the infographic; publications taking advantage of it included Time, Forbes, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vanity Fair, and Fast Company. An audience of 130 million saw the graphic; through Twitter alone, it found its way to 15 million people. 

Our congratulations go to The BMJ team that brought the martini-soaked secret agent back to life in so useful and clever a fashion and won the Best Infographic category in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

Electronic newsletters present communicators with an inordinate number of challenges. Pushed to readers, they ask to be opened and read in the midst of everything else that occupies a reader’s day. If they’re too long, readers give up. If it’s hard to find something interesting or relevant, they hit the delete button. 

Vision Service Plan (VSP) has addressed the challenges of delivering a newsletter people will want to read with a publication that requires little scrolling, is bright and inviting, and is loaded with material that aligns brilliantly with the interests of its subscribers. As a result, VSP’s EnVision newsletter is the winner of the Best Electronic Publication category in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

The ability to scan the newsletter in seconds in order to find material you’re interested in is a top priority, and EnVision pulls this off with clearly labeled, recurring section heads and large table-of-contents-like headlines with calls to action.

For example, under the section heading “Trending Topics,” the kicker “Ask the Eye Doc” precedes the headline “What is pink eye and how can I recognize it?” followed by a button reading “The Doctor Answers,” a clear invitation to click and read. 

The table of contents approach—keeping most of the narrative on a website to which readers can click—keeps the newsletter short and appealing, which helps explain an extraordinary open rate of more than 27 percent—and 40 percent among people who have subscribed for more than six months. Virtually nobody unsubscribes from EnVision, and readers are inspired to share content through social channels at an impressive rate of 1,200 times monthly. The use of imagery seals the deal for EnVision; for example, one infographic achieved a 15 percent click-through rate, leading to 48,000 page views. 

We’re pleased to recognize Kathy Limon, Deanna Mullen, Lauren Coppage, and Joshua Cosico for their outstanding effort.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

The idea of having a doctor who is also a mother write a pediatric-focused blog was a good one, but it also put strain on an already busy member of the Dayton Children’s Hospital staff. Enter the new idea of a group blog authored by a “Dr. Mom Squad.”

Established based on the recognition that mothers make the vast majority of a family’s health care decisions, the blog now features at least one new post each week covering topics that inspire readers to talk and share, such as night terrors and bedwetting. The blog’s great content wasn’t happenstance. 

Once the bloggers were recruited, they were also trained. An editorial calendar dictated topics and ensured posts were published on a regular schedule. A social media campaign, along with traditional advertising, was employed to boost awareness of the blog. By itself, the blog is worthy of recognition based on the top-drawer content and its use of current events to inform content choice—one post addressed the Sandy Hook shooting, one focused on CVS’s decision to stop selling tobacco products, and one was titled, “Everybody’s talking about ‘twerking’—are your kids?” 

The results the Dr. Mom Squad blog achieved earn it a first-place win in the Best Blog category of Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards, with a 295 percent increase in page views accounting for nearly 6,000 views per month (nearly 12,000 in 2014). The blog has resulted in media interviews for the doctors, enhancing the hospital’s local reputation, and has led to referrals to the hospital. 

Our hat’s off to Dayton Children’s Hospital’s Grace Jones for this noteworthy entry.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

It might seem unfair to give a writing award to a piece that covers a never-before-attempted procedure on the father of an A-list celebrity. 

That’s just what we’re doing, though—honoring a blog post that features the first-ever retrograde gene therapy, in which Blake Lively’s father received stem cells delivered to the heart in order to repair damaged muscles and arteries without invasive surgery. 

We’re not starstruck, nor are we suckers for articles proclaiming a “first.” We are suckers for great writing, which characterizes this article that had us glued to the screen from start to finish. Even more, we’re suckers for clear goals and results that match. 

In this case, the University of Utah’s Health Science Department of Public Affairs saw an opportunity to get attention for a hospital that usually isn’t on the mainstream media’s radar and win Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Award for Best Article.

The post was part of a larger strategy designed to attract the attention of major news outlets on the coasts. Media relations staff used the post to pitch People magazine, which ran with the story that was also covered by CNN, US Weekly, the New York Daily News, the U.K.’s Daily Mail, and The Huffington Post, to name a few. The strategy paid off, resulting in 40 patient referrals in the first 10 hours the post was up; during the first week, website traffic grew by more than 500 percent. The article “drastically improved our national reputation as a player on cardiac issues,” according to the entry. 

Well done, Melinda Rogers!

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

With 10 hospitals and 20 additional health-related businesses in Maryland and Washington, D.C.—where some serious competitors grab a lot of consumer attention—advertising can be a dicey proposition.

In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Hospital and the University of Maryland Medical Center are prominent, while the nation’s capital also has its share of well-known medical centers. 

To elevate awareness of MedStar’s facilities, communicators needed to focus on key differentiators, the most significant of which was access: No matter where you might be in MedStar’s region, you’re not far from a MedStar hospital. To pull off this feat, MedStar didn’t produce generic TV spots, but rather targeted specific parts of its region, creating a commercial touting Washington Hospital Center and Georgetown University Hospital in the D.C. area, while in Baltimore, the focus was on access to multiple facilities from various parts of the city. 

As a result of the geographic targeting of messages, MedStar recorded a three-point increase in its annual brand awareness study. 

We offer our heartiest congratulations to Jean Hitchock, Ty Kennon, and Melissa Lambdin from MedStar, and from the company’s advertising agency, ab+c Creative Intelligence, our congratulations go out to Tom McGivney, Lynda Rudolph, Joe Dawson, Maria Stearns, Corrine Cowen, and Stacy Speicher, all winners in the Best TV Advertising Campaign category of Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards!

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

There is no understating the rise of visual communication. Many of the photos people take are shared on Facebook, while Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr have all gained prominence as social/visual networks. 

Ruder Finn and its client, Novartis, with global campaign ambassador and world-renowned photographer Anne Geddes and global partner the Confederation of Meningitis Organizations (CoMO), tapped into this trend as the cornerstone of their effort to raise awareness of meningococcal disease, a horrifying illness that can kill within a day of onset, yet be prevented by a simple childhood vaccination. 

To capture both the horrific aftermath of the disease for survivors as well as their strength and courage, the campaign focused on photographs by Anne Geddes, who captured portraits of 15 survivors and their families from multiple geographic locations. Deploying the images—along with well-crafted messages—through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr proved extremely effective, and the effort was enhanced by a series of interview videos, a media relations campaign, and an e-book collection of the images. 

The proof is in the results: At least one of the campaign’s key messages was contained in every story covering the campaign, while nearly 3,000 social media posts helped amplify the buzz. The free e-book, available through iTunes, was downloaded more than 12,000 times, and the videos were viewed more than 15,000 times. Most important, this entry didn’t stop at outputs. Rather, the campaign resulted in conversation among parents, survivors, medical professionals, and advocates, demonstrating that an original, image-based campaign can produce impressive outcomes.

Congratulations to Ruder Finn and Novartis Vaccines on their win in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards for Best PR Campaign.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

Getting the word out that a five-minute test you can take anywhere—even the comfort of your own home—could clue you in to a greater risk of heart disease is no easy task. 

It’s a topic most people would rather avoid, and amidst the flood of health-related information coming at people from all directions these days, it would be easy to miss. 

The team at Banner Health was able to combine direct messaging with paid advertising, social media, in-person events, and even a QR code to drive people to take the test, inspired by its simplicity and ease of access. But getting people to participate was just half the battle. When results showed a third of those who took the test were “high risk,” Banner Health followed up with them, encouraging them to make appointments with their doctors. 

Of particular note, the data from participants in the test is added to Banner’s Customer Relationship Management database. In the future, Banner will be able to identify new patients who came to Banner because they took the test. This CRM-based approach to patients is not common among health care providers, but more and more innovative hospitals and systems are starting to look at “lifetime value of a patient,” and a CRM (or Patient Relationship Management) system is at the heart of the concept. For its innovation, we name Banner Health the winning entry in the Best Marketing Campaign category of Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

Even more pertinent to this case study, though, is the fact that study participants were subscribed to email marketing communications about heart health. The cross-media approach, along with the direct outreach paired with mainstream and social media activities, lead us to offer our congratulations to the team of Stacy Mowery and Anne Dexheimer from Banner Health and its partner, O’Brien Advertising. 

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

Every organization struggles to encourage its employees to participate in its wellness activities, but BJC HealthCare took the concept of promoting wellness to a new level by awarding “scholarships” to three employees. 

The funds paid for gym memberships, personal training, and nutritional counseling for six months—all of which would be documented on video and shared with other employees, documentary-style, to motivate them to participate as well. 
The videos transcended the usual productions that focus on weight loss, emphasizing cholesterol, glucose, and blood pressure so other employees watching the videos would get the message that weight loss is just one part of a healthy lifestyle. A dozen videos followed the three staffers from their initial conversations with wellness professionals to the outcomes of their six months in the program. 

Those outcomes were inspiring and won the Best Internal Fitness or Health Campaign in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

Each of the three scholarship recipients saw significant improvements in body mass index, cholesterol, glucose, and blood pressure. Supported by supplemental communication collateral, the videos were viewed more than 5,000 times by employees, with an additional 3,000 views recorded after the videos were uploaded to multiple public channels, leading to increases in enrollment in the program. 

This innovative approach, tapping into the surging interest in video content, was implemented by Patrick Donovan and Jeremy Koerber. Congratulations.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

Military personnel returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan experience a heightened susceptibility to psychological problems, but few seek professional help. The Real Warriors Campaign was undertaken by the U.S. Defense Department five years ago to address the problem, which is exacerbated by a stigma attached to a service member admitting he or she may have a psychological problem. 

Employing solid up-front research as the foundation for the campaign, the full-time members of the campaign staff were able to achieve sound, measurable results—results linked directly to the campaign objectives. For example, according to a 2013 analysis by the Department of Defense’s Mental Health Advisory Team (MHAT), perceptions of barriers to receiving behavioral health care improved considerably as a result of the campaign. 

From a communications standpoint, the coordinated campaign across mainstream media, social media, in-person events, and online resources was executed with precision and creativity, raising awareness of this serious issue and ultimately inspiring more people to seek the care they need. While the execution of the campaign—focusing on real people who have suffered psychological distress and were helped by professional care—is worthy of recognition in its own right, the research that drove the campaign is at the heart of our decision to honor Booz Allen Hamilton and the team responsible for the Real Warriors Campaign’s development and implementation with top honors in the Best External Fitness or Health Campaign in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

Congrats to Booz Allen Hamilton and the team from the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury on a successful campaign!

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.