Healthcare PR: Strategies for Navigating Today’s Complex Media Landscape
Bryan Kawasaki, director, national communications, Providence
Public relations, or PR, is first and foremost about building and maintaining trusted relationships externally, with consumers and patients, providers, the media, and the larger community. We spoke with two healthcare PR leaders about how they forge those connections and raise the profile of their organizations to key audiences. Their work requires a multifaceted approach that has become only more complex over time as the media landscape has evolved.
“Most communications leaders in health care have many responsibilities that go beyond just media relations and trade relations,” says Sean Couch, executive director, communications & consumer strategy at Northeast Georgia Health System (NGHS), a five-hospital regional safety net system serving a population of 1 million across 19 counties in Georgia. “Within our health system, all public relations, consumer marketing, provider-to-provider marketing, media relations, crisis communications, and internal communications/corporate communications all report through a consolidated department — and digital health is housed in the same division.”
Communications at Providence, a major health system with 51 hospitals operating in seven states in the western U.S., is its own entity. “Communications is actually split from marketing at Providence,” says Bryan Kawasaki, director, national communications at Providence. “We work together, but they are different departments.” To cover such a large, multistate region, communications is divided into local, divisional, and national teams at Providence.
In our new article, you’ll discover how these healthcare PR leaders forge trusted connections with consumers, patients, providers, and the media, and gain insights on how to navigate the evolving media landscape to ensure transparency, clear messaging, and community engagement.
Read the full article now: A Tale of Two Health System Public Relations Teams
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President