Community Partnerships

Breaking Down Barriers to Mental Health Treatment

Nicole Connell

// By Susan Dubuque // Philadelphia’s first behavioral health urgent care for adults provides immediate access to vital services, helping to reduce ED visits and inpatient stays and offering a positive experience even on the worst days. Read on to learn more about this care model, which aims to improve access, elevate patient experience, and prevent crises.

Bridging the Gap: One Health System’s Solution to a National Health Crisis

VCU Health

// By Susan Dubuque // The day a teenage boy arrived at the trauma center with a severe gunshot wound, and the team saved his life, it filled them with an incredible sense of joy. This was the genesis of the VCU Health Bridging the Gap Program. Learn how this team set out to reduce violent injuries.

Recruitment Marketing: New Partnership Boosts Workforce Development

Rachel Smith, Evangelical Community Hospital

// By John Marzano // Workforce shortages and caregiver capacity challenges impact virtually all health care organizations across the U.S. A recent survey found 81 percent reported delays in care due to staff shortages. Discover how two organizations’ HR teams work alongside marketing to bring new life to the health care recruitment process.

Gen Z’s Wellness Revolution: Challenges and Opportunities for Health Care Brands

Amanda Williams is Parallel Path’s senior director

The tweens, teens, and 20-somethings who make up Gen Z have different health and wellness priorities than older generations. How can health care organizations meet them where they are? Here, we examine some challenges this generation faces, how it defines health and well-being, and how health care brands can resonate with it.

Most Wellness Brands Don’t Connect with Gen Z Women. What’s the Cure?

// By Amanda Williams // The tweens, teens, and 20-somethings who make up Gen Z have different health and wellness priorities than older generations. How can health care organizations meet them where they are? Here, we examine some challenges this generation faces, how it defines health and well-being, and how health care brands can resonate with it.

Rethinking Caregiving in America: A Framework for Growth and Sustainability

// By Daniel Fell // The case for supporting family caregivers as an integral part of the care team. Here, we look at recent initiatives led by the federal government, share some programs developed by forward-thinking health systems, and propose a framework that health care executives can use to reimagine the role of caregivers.

How Can Health Care Organizations Bridge the Digital Divide?

David Grandy, national vice president, innovation for Kaiser Permanente

For most Americans, expansion of digital health care at hospitals and health systems across the nation has improved the patient experience and medical outcomes. But for individuals unable to access broadband internet service or lacking ability or desire to use web-based tools, modern medicine’s benefits are beyond their grasp. Innovators at California-based Kaiser Permanente (KP) Read More

Beyond the Headlines: Health System Leaders Share Their Crisis Communication Strategies

Lauren Landwerlin, vice president, strategy, marketing, and communications, Saint Francis Health System

Health systems rely on their communications teams to keep all stakeholders informed during a crisis and help to bring healing to the community in the aftermath, through empathetic messaging. At SHSMD Connections in September, three health system communications leaders shared their experiences following a crisis in their respective communities. “Sometimes the strength of the people Read More

Lessons from a Crisis: When You’re in the Eye of the Storm

Lisa O’Neil, system director of marketing and brand management, Lee Health

You don’t know what you don’t know until you’re faced with leading your organization through a crisis. Here are three stories from leaders whose best advice is to expect that, sooner or later, a crisis will come. It’s not if – it’s when. // By Susan Dubuque // Health systems rely on their communications teams Read More

Better Health, One Haircut at a Time

Althea Fung

Barbers across the country are helping their customers identify and prevent health problems. For Black men, these trusted relationships can be a lifesaver. // By Althea Fung // We all know the trope — men don’t like to visit the doctor. Unfortunately, for Black men, the cliché has all too real consequences. Black men avoid Read More

Johns Hopkins Medicine Leveraged Positive Momentum to Drive Repositioning

During the past two years of a pandemic that continues to rage, health care brands have absorbed the additional burden of managing their reputations in the throes of unprecedented consumer demand for needed services to counter COVID-19 within their communities. Hospitals and health systems across the U.S., including Johns Hopkins Medicine, have overwhelmingly answered the Read More

How Walmart Is Remaking Itself as a Health and Wellness Destination

Karissa Price, vice president of marketing, food, consumables, and health and wellness, Walmart

Notwithstanding the health care industry’s keen interest in Walmart and figuring out what its next move might be, most consumers still think of Walmart as a retail store, not a health and wellness destination. Karissa Price, Walmart’s vice president of marketing, food, consumables, and health and wellness at the time of our reporting, sought to Read More

Johns Hopkins Medicine — Positioning Brand Beyond the Product

Suzanne Sawyer, SVP, chief marketing and communications officer, Johns Hopkins Medicine

// By John Marzano // In the middle of a pandemic, with the world tuning in daily to view the latest alarming statistics on infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, Johns Hopkins Medicine launched a new brand campaign centered on hope, connection, and progress. During the past two years of a pandemic that continues to rage throughout Read More

Personalized Content Key to Earning Consumers’ Trust in Walmart As a Health and Wellness Destination

Diana Jones, communications and wellness consultant, Walmart

// By Jane Weber Brubaker // Walmart’s marketing VP believes that high-quality, personalized health care content is the start to building trusted relationships with consumers, and supporting them on their health care journeys. Notwithstanding the health care industry’s keen interest in Walmart and figuring out what its next move might be, most consumers still think Read More

Mobile Screening Targets Lung Cancer in West Virginia

Jenny Ostien, director of the Mobile Cancer Screening Program, WVU Cancer Institute

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in West Virginia, with more deaths each year than breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers combined. According to the 2019 West Virginia Cancer Burden Report, lung cancer accounts for 18 percent of all new cancer diagnoses in the state. Only 22 percent of those receiving a lung Read More

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 Read More

Expansion Facilitates Cancer Treatment for Orange County Residents

City of Hope

Getting a cancer diagnosis is bad enough. Having to jump on the freeway and drive two hours each way to access care adds significantly to the stress. But that’s what many residents of Orange County, California did when they needed highly specialized cancer care. “Your first shot is your best shot, because it’s really important Read More

City of Hope Expands to Orange County

Nisha Morris, vice president of marketing communications, City of Hope Orange County

// By Jane Weber Brubaker // To meet the expected demand for highly specialized cancer services in Orange County, City of Hope has opened four cancer treatment sites and is currently building a 190,000-square-foot cancer center, scheduled to open next year. A separate specialty hospital will be ready to open its doors in 2025. The Read More

Looking Toward the Future by “Unscaling” Health Care

Jefferson Health

Things are changing when the CEO of a major health system comprising 14 hospitals — soon to be 18 — tosses around phrases like “health care at any address” and says things like, “We want to be the partner for those people who want to thrive without health care getting in the way.” The definition Read More