This week's healthcare PR strategy: putting a face to the research. Too much important health research falls to the bottom of reporters' in-boxes because there's no human
interest angle to go along with those key statistics. John Schmidt, SVP with Edelman and manager of the firm's American Health Care Association account, represents 12,000 long-
term care facilities nationwide. About 80 percent of the more than 1.6 million people confined to nursing homes are paid for by Medicare and Medicaid, Schmidt says. But the
funding for those programs is under constant threat.
While Edelman and AHCA rely heavily on research from highly credible third party sources like the UNC School of Public Health at Chapel Hill, and on research the association
commissions itself, their efforts to win the attention of the media and lawmakers alike revolve around putting a human face to the issues.
The association is currently conducting a cross-country RV tour that touts messages like, "Save our seniors," and "Stop the cuts." The tour touts some shocking statistics (the
government is under-funding long-term care by about $3.5 billion a year, meaning it pays about $4.50 an hour for the care of seriously ill senior citizens in long-term facilities
- less than the average teenager earns for an hour of babysitting). And the tour vehicle certainly attracts attention. But it is the people participating in the tour events who
really cut to the core of the problem. The RV events are often held on the steps of the state capitols, with family members or residents of long-term care facilities there to
spread the message personally.
"We spend a lot of time counting numbers and doing the math, but when we have events, it's personal: 'We can't let cuts happen to Illinois seniors' [for example]. It's a very
visual thing," Schmidt says.
As soon as an event has been completed, the Edelman team takes the media coverage (an average of one television and one print hit for each stop on the tour) and packages it for
lobbyists on Capitol Hill. That media coverage can be used to show lawmakers, "This is what's happening in their backyards," Schmidt says. (Contact: Schmidt: [email protected])