Industry Leaders Reflect on the Unique Challenges of 2021

Mark Klein, senior vice president, Corporate Communications & Public Affairs, Dignity Health

“For two years, marketing and communication professionals have faced the excruciating crisis of a pandemic nothing fully prepared us for,” says Rhoda Weiss, president of the Rhoda Weiss Consulting Group.

“We’re changing how and from where we work, balancing dichotomies of layoffs and staff shortages, experiencing colleague and personal burnout, dealing with new and conflicting information, and too much more.”

Here’s an excerpt from Weiss’s new article:

Knowing we achieve much more together, each week since March 2020, I’ve led and coordinated teleconferences for 100+ marketing and communications executives representing a majority of U.S. hospitals. Numbering more than 150 75-minute calls and 2,500 resources, innovations, and activities, each mini-conference — with eight to 10 colleagues and often CEO speakers — shares issues, challenges, solutions, best practices, and more.

To gain further insights, I asked colleagues from our group representing regional and national health systems to share challenges, solutions, and activities resulting from pandemic experiences.

According to Mark Klein, senior vice president, Corporate Communications & Public Affairs at Dignity Health, “Some of the hardest lessons of COVID-19 have also been eye-openers leading us to important, lasting innovation in our communications strategy. We have always known our local leaders are trusted in their communities; but we underestimated how important pre-existing trust equity would prove to be in a public health emergency like a pandemic, where what was known — the science, public health guidance, community impact — was constantly evolving and frequently unclear.

“We rapidly shifted from a top-down communications model to an emphasis on providing the clearest possible guidance about evolving science and our policies to our local communicators, in order to support their ability to keep on doing what they have long done so well.”

Read the full story now for additional reflections from industry leaders:

View from the C-Suite: A Look Back at the Challenges and Opportunities of 2021 from Five Industry Leaders

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President