Unique Skills Case Study for The Leapfrog Group
Promoting Vaccination
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the “We Can Do This” COVID-19 Public Education Campaign as a national initiative to increase public confidence in and uptake of COVID vaccines, while reinforcing basic prevention measures such as mask wearing and social distancing. The Reis Group leads the earned media strategy for the HHS Campaign. In May 2021, with vaccine hesitancy and distrust in the federal government increasing across the country, The Reis Group tapped into research showing that the public held high trust in local messengers in their communities to receive relevant COVID and vaccine information. Working closely with HHS and the White House, we coordinated local market media outreach in 21 hard-to-reach populations with low vaccination rates and high hesitancy. We identified trusted local messengers by tapping our extensive client relationships with health care professionals, including pharmacists, infectious diseases experts, pediatricians, and other local physicians. We secured multiple stories in all 21 of the target markets. Our cumulative efforts have resulted in 17 billion media impressions.
Achieving Thought Leadership
Banner Health, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit hospital systems, engaged The Reis Group to raise the profile of its senior leadership team by showcasing its achievements in innovation, highlighting its clinical excellence and role in advancing medical research, and in training America’s future healthcare workforce.
To do this, we created and executed numerous thought-leadership opportunities, including speaking engagements, award submissions, and commentaries. These efforts became especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic to showcase Banner’s leadership throughout Arizona to load-balance patients to ensure that no one hospital would be overwhelmed by a surge as long as other hospitals had the capacity to care for COVID patients.
During the first two years of the pandemic, our efforts resulted in 45 speaking engagements, including U.S. News & World Report’s Healthcare of Tomorrow, the Health 2.0 Conference, and Becker’s Healthcare Annual Meeting; more than 50 million media impressions, including a feature Q&A in Modern Healthcare and a commentary in Morning Consult; and nine award recognitions, including Modern Healthcare’s 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare, 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives, and Top 25 Women Leaders, as well as Becker’s hospital and health system “CFOs-to-know” and top hospitals & health systems with innovation programs.
Client Testimonials
“In order to launch a new era in Alzheimer’s prevention research, chart new territory, and promote a shared sense of commitment to this cause, we have sought to communicate our message to a range of stakeholders around the world and to do so in the most credible and impactful way. The Reis Group team has proved to be the perfect champions to do just that. They have helped us to exceed our highly ambitious goals, and they have shared our own commitment and values every step along the way. I continue to count on my dear friend Sharon Reis and her colleagues to help us fulfill our goal of finding effective Alzheimer’s prevention therapies within the next decade.”
Eric Reiman, MD, Executive Director of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute and Chief Executive Officer for Banner Research
“The Reis Group has been a key partner in the government’s COVID-19 Vaccine Education Campaign. Their strategic thinking and ability to anticipate and navigate a constantly shifting environment ensured the campaign effectively engaged a crucial target audience – trusted messengers – to convey important vaccination information. Research demonstrates that the vaccine hesitant overwhelmingly trust their personal doctor; and so, The Reis Group quickly devised a strategy and leveraged their extensive network to recruit doctors, the most trusted messengers on vaccines. Within weeks local doctors were speaking to local media in the hardest hit areas of the country. This strategy continues to provide substantial benefits in increasing vaccination rates and reducing vaccine hesitancy among key populations.”
Georgeta Dragoiu, White House Presidential Innovation Fellow at COVID-19 Vaccine Public Education Strategy and Media Campaign
“Until we began our work with The Reis Group, we had never consulted with a public relations firm before and didn’t know what to expect. They took the time to thoroughly understand our organization and scaled their services to fit our needs exactly. The Reis Group understands that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to responding to the needs of organizations like ours and follows through on that understanding with collaborative services that are customized to the client. They took the time to listen to our story and dig deeper into the issues surrounding our need for public relations expertise—and then they worked with us to develop a creative, exciting plan that’s responsive to our community and stakeholders.”
Lavina Harless, MSW, LSCW, Senior Director of Examination Services, Association of Social Work Boards
