Yesterday I met with an interesting company that was interviewing healthcare public relations agencies. They had developed a detailed set of criteria for the PR agency that they were going to select. This is not uncommon, in fact, it is de rigeur. In this case, management kept coming back to their desire to hire an agency that “thinks out of the box,” and is “highly creative.” Not the “normal type of healthcare or medical PR” agency.” Understandably they also placed a premium on results, with the goal of selecting the agency that could combine their intellectual and creative assets with a solid track record of delivering for their clients.
Our discussion made me think of Colleen, a senior account executive at Schwartz. For years Colleen and I have worked together on a non-branded campaign to heighten awareness of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). The target media for the campaign has always been consumer-type media of all kinds - daily newspapers, women’s books, men’s publications, family magazines, etc. - the hardest and most difficult coverage to land. We have been hugely successful in our campaign, due largely to an account team composed of people like Colleen.
Around three years ago (yes years!) Colleen first interested a senior editor at Self in writing a piece on OSA. This was a key outlet for us because women are gatekeepers to family health and our research had shown that spouses and significant others frequently “turned their husbands and boyfriends in” due to excessive snoring - a leading indicator of OSA. Colleen was thrilled since Self is a such a tough “get.” She sent information to the editor but the piece kept on getting pushed out. The editor left Self and Colleen had to start over again and again and again…Every time important new studies came out on OSA, Colleen would renew negotiations with a revolving cast of editors. As Ahab, it became her Moby Dick. Time passed but Colleen would not be deterred. Then one blessed day last month, Colleen arrived at our meeting breathless with the news that after getting a freelance writer interested in writing the story for Self and prodding her to conduct interviews, the piece was finally going to run in the January 2010 issue of Self. And you know what? It did. Here’s an abbreviated version:
So, what does any of this have to do with the company I met with yesterday? Like them, I believe that great healthcare PR people need to be creative and be willing to leave traditional ideas behind and think expansively and “out of the box.” Over the years on this campaign we had consistently provided the client with some really great, innovative concepts. BUT….and this is a big “but,” more than anything, the best PR people I know are tenacious, “never-say-die” advocates for their clients. I have always thought that great healthcare PR or PR of any kind actually combine a dose of healthy inspiration with a continuous dose of perspiration. While companies sometimes think that there must be a magic bullet or mysterious secret sauce to what we do, I disagree. It’s pretty simple if you think of it.
Creativity and brilliant strategy is essential to all effective PR.campaigns. We take great pride in our ideas here at Schwartz. But sometimes it is the sheer effort of a bright, energetic, tireless, undefeatable PR pro - like Colleen - that makes the difference. In PR as in life, there’s no real substitute for going the extra yard.
The January 24th edition of the Sunday New York Times ran a Page One Investigative report on the perils and dire consequences on the use of radiation in medical diagnostics and cancer therapies. The lengthy report, put together by an investigative team of six people, left the reader chilled and saddened for the families of the two patients whose experiences formed the substance of the vast majority of the Times’ reporting. Indeed they suffered greatly as a result of what the Times inferred was a result of a human error and/or faults in complex technology. Rare will be the reader who will put the piece down believing as much in the safety and efficacy of radiation as when they began reading.
Yet the Report was both disconcerting and troublesome to me. As a healthcare public relations professional, I have indeed represented companies who had developed both radiation diagnostics and various types of therapies, yet even so, I found I was not biased by my professional associations. What really was disturbing to me was this quote found in the 9th paragraph of the 4 full page article.
“Without a doubt, radiation saves countless lives, and serious accidents are rare.”
OK. I get that—and I believe it. For many years radiation based protocols have been the standard of care and indeed gold standard in more procedures than I have time to list here. And this knowledge, juxtaposed with the Times reporting of yesterday is totally perplexing to me. I feel that the Times reporting was both sensationalistic and severely unbalanced. If they were to use all of that hugely expensive space in the Sunday paper detailing the potentially dangerous applications of radiation, would not a great deal larger amount of space be required to tell the stories of just some of the “countless” number of lives that the Times says radiation therapy has saved. I don’t get it.
Of course medical error and improper use of new and different technologies are serious problems. They deserve to be covered and extensively reported on. But to run such an emotional and one-sided account as the Times did, disappoints me. Not only as a healthcare PR Pro, but also as an informed potential patient. I love the Times. It is my favorite newspaper and a ‘must-read’ every day. But in this case they fell far short of their usually high journalistic standards. And in doing so, carried out an injustice to their readers by painting a picture that only tells a small, small part of the story.
Every day now, ubiquitous across all types of media, both Democrats and Republicans are in full-throated discourse (a polite term) debating the future of America’s health care system. The discussion is decidedly unpolite, loud, passionate and to say the least, confusing. The Democrats, ardent supporters of major overhauls to our current healthcare system, have (to me anyway) yet to paint a cogent and articulate rationale for many of their proposals, and the Republicans, have fallen to pathetic imagery suggesting that our country’s senior citizens would be systematically denied life-saving care under measures advocated by the Democrats. How sad. But should we really be surprised?
Despite the assistance of world-class political consultants, communications pros, and talking head spinmeisters who are household names, both sides are grasping at straws in attempting to craft and then communicate simple, easy-to-understand messages that make real sense and resonate across political divides to the American people. I have to admit, that I am confused, and I deal in these issues almost every day. But again should this surprise us?
Think about it. Most of the hot button political issues of our time can be easily etched in the sharp contrasts of black and white. Go to war or not? Right to life or pro-choice? Gun control or not? Higher taxes or lower taxes? Soft on Crime? Hard on crime. The discussions surrounding these issues are easily framed and communicated. Why? Because they are simple. They are visceral in nature and professional political communicators have been easily able to manipulate the American public for decades now in driving home both their own positions and depositioning the competition with language and images that appeal to the lowest common denominator. Black and white stuff.
So, why are they having such a hard time with the healthcare discussion? Because the infrastructure, issues and care and cost basis of our healthcare system is, if nothing else, NOT simple. In fact, they are exceedingly complex. And almost incomprehensible to the average American. HMOs, PPOs, payors, caregivers, deductables, Medicaid, pre-existing conditions, wide variances in insurance coverage across economic and geographic stratas, medicare, co-pays, generics and on and on it goes. Whatever happened to the days when your own doctor came to your home with his little black bag? And then when you overlay the thicket of our current misunderstood system with new ideas and thinking, why it’s almost impossible to fully understand. It is exactly the complexity of all of this that has even the most experienced and savvy of the political PR pros scratching their heads---they’re not used to or capable of real substantive debate and discussion on complex issues. Give them the sizzle over the meat any day. You want to talk about capital punishment? Bring it on. Minimum wage? No problem. But the issues surrounding our healthcare system are deep and not easily simplified into sound bites.
So here is my suggestion. Democrats and Republicans alike should carefully consider retaining professional healthcare communicators in lieu of the political Lords of spin who are so obviously failing at convincing Americans on the merits of virtually anything at this point. Why? There are many fine healthcare and medical PR agencies across the country that are extremely adept at taking complex and sophisticated healthcare issues and translating them into simple, easy to understand messaging. These communications professionals have experience in representing virtually all of the players in the healthcare arena. Medical device companies with sophisticated technologies, consumer advocacy groups, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, physician groups, hospitals, research organizations and more. They are familiar with working in the regulated environment of our healthcare system. They are smart enough to realize that in America’s current healthcare system or even in a utopian one of the future, nothing is black and white. That there are nuances and shades of gray in most everything. Healthcare PR professionals would also not come at the communications challenge from a political perspective, but rather from an overall systemic viewpoint, in which the biggest challenge is education. And lastly, medical and healthcare pros realize that the biggest ally they could have in promoting a position is a fully informed and educated American public, not one kept in the dark by innuendo, negative images, and distortion of the facts.
Perhaps no single item in recent memory has generated as much curiosity and interest from healthcare PR Pros and marketers than has the growing phenomenon broadly titled "Social Media". Social Media can be broadly defined as a whole group of new communications channels that enable a more direct and conversational dialogue between medical device, pharmaceutical and biopharma companies and their key constituencies--including patients and clinicians.
The interest in Social Media is being driven by a confluence of two factors. First--dramatic changes in the more traditional media channels typically used by healthcare companies. Print. Broadcast. Radio. The economic downturn has reduced both the number of outlets that healthcare companies have used to reach key audiences as well as the sheer time allocated to healthcare stories. Second is the advent of rapidly emerging technologies that enable a shift from the "one-way" nature of traditional media to a more conversational or cocktail party approach to engaging audiences.
Together, these two factors are stimulating whole new areas of opportunity for the healthcare or medical public relations professional and the companies they work for. But there are challenges as well.
Recently Schwartz Communications held a Webinar that provided an overview of the types of Social media programs available for medical device companies, but it is applicable to all types of healthcare companies as well.
One of the more interesting recent medical stories to hit the mainstream media was the news that for the first time, the FDA has cleared the use of embryonic stem cells in human clinical trials. This particular trial will use a stem cell line developed by Geron, Inc. of Menlo Park, CA and will be implanted in people who have suffered acute spinal cord injury. As somebody who has actually seen the Geron-developed video of the stem cell’s affect on paralyzed mice walking and running after having been implanted with the Geron cells, the raw potential of the therapy is breathtaking. Of course, it will take many years of rigorous scientific testing in people to determine both safety and efficacy. This first small 10-patient trial however is an important first step.
What is curious and thought provoking about this news is its timing. The public debate over embryonic stem cells has been raging for many years now. Embryonic stem cells, as their name suggests, are derived from embryos. Specifically from embryos that develop from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro and then donated for research purposes, with the informed consent of the donors. The debate became a political ‘hot button’ issue when in 2001, the former Bush administration precluded public funding of additional stem cell research beyond 31 specific stem cell lines—ironically of which the Geron cell line was one. The Geron cell line was developed without public funding using instead the private capital markets. The public funding issue was largely perceived as a political gesture toward conservative supporters of President Bush as well as an extension of former President Bush’s own religious beliefs. To which of course, he is certainly entitled as are we all.
During the course of applying to the FDA for clearance of this trial, Geron submitted a 21,000 page Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the FDA, believed to be the largest and most thoroughly documented science that the FDA has reviewed in its history. The company says that the application detailed more than 24 separate animal studies of its product that established both safety and efficacy in animals. A lot of this scientific data had appeared in peer-reviewed publications over the years of development, including a study published seven years ago that showed efficacy in rats. As the FDA laboriously poured over the data during the years of the Bush Administration’s tenure, more people suffered from acute paralysis and investors bounced Geron’s stock up and down.
Then on January 21st, only ONE day after the Obama Administration took office, the FDA, suddenly and without warning, announced clearance of the Geron trial. While much of the news reporting on the clearance focused specifically on the scientific importance of the trial, a few intrepid reporters openly speculated that the change in the White House had immediate impact on FDA policy. This is a topic worthy of discussion. Was the timing simply a coincidence? Or did the Bush administration tacitly impose its own political and/or ethical views on the FDA? The job of the FDA is difficult. It must ensure that the safety of the public is held paramount and at the same time carefully guide new products and technologies through a process that allows new therapies to get to the marketplace after appropriate review. To add a layer of “politicization” to this process does not serve the public or the government. The science of medicine is after all transparent to personal belief or religious conviction—and politics.
What's really keeping you awake
