Audrey M. Huang, Director, Marketing and Communications for Research and Education, Director, Media Relations, Johns Hopkins Medicine
Audrey spearheaded the effort to continue to attract the best students, postdocs, fellows and residents to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Johns Hopkins Medicine Marketing and Communications often uses the voices of faculty members and leadership to promote institutional, clinical, research and education activities. But Audrey wondered: What about the prospective students, fellows, postdocs or residents, the lifeblood of the academic medical center? After analyzing electronic communications from other top academic medical centers, it appeared that no one else used younger voices either. Audrey devised the idea, and under her guidance, a small team launched a new blog written by current trainees for an audience of current and prospective trainees at and beyond Johns Hopkins. Nearly 4,000 current trainees at the school of medicine were asked to apply, more than 50 did and 12 were selected for the first cohort. Each blogger committed to writing one to two entries per month for six months. In the first six months, 70 blog posts were published and promoted via social media and the institutional website. The first few months saw about 1,000 sessions per month, and now the blog averages more than 2,000 sessions per month.