Kindness. Recovery. Brightness. These are some of the words my colleagues used during a recent Zoom meeting to describe their hopes and expectations for 2021. Several shared news of a friend’s pregnancy, an engagement, a pleasant family milestone, or possible vacation. Their energy and optimism reminded me that despite the pain and chaos of the …
Whether you’ve been working in health, public health, media, or public relations, or you’re just a human trying to survive, 2020 has been an unforgettable and bizarre experience. Endless depressing case counts and deaths. COVID-19 special reports. White House coronavirus briefings. CDC, WHO and Task Force updates and trending hashtags about PPE, testing, ventilators and …
Continue reading … “Following the “COVID Story”: Reflecting on Coronavirus Media Coverage”
This article originally appeared in O’Dwyer’s October 2020 Healthcare Issue. Failure to stay relevant is a catastrophe for PR professionals. For 2020, relevancy is the primary determinant of success in the era of COVID-19. For all of us, not just those in healthcare communications, this has been a year of chaos. We were forced to …
Continue reading … “Shifting Healthcare Communications Strategies”
“Cancer survivor.” It’s a title of honor that 17 million Americans are proud to wear. While the title is hard-won, for many survivors the sense of relief and gratitude drift away quickly, leaving in its place difficult challenges such as depression, substance use, and unhealthy diet and lifestyle. These disturbances have a real impact — …
This blog also appeared on PRSA-NCC. COVID-19 has exploded the healthcare system. But sometime in the future, Americans will return to “normal” and once again will concentrate on the basics of staying healthy in their everyday lives. The coronavirus has revealed how vulnerable so many of us are because of underlying conditions. Two years ago, …