Awards

We are excited to share that our Australian partner, VIVA! Communications, was awarded first place in the Health Organisations category at the prestigious PRIA Golden Target awards last Wednesday, 7 October, in Sydney.  VIVA! was responsible for three of the 11 shortlisted finalists for the Health Organisations award and their winning campaign, “Plea for Life” saw them partner with the aHUS patient support group to help secure Federal funding for lifesaving treatments for aHUS, a fatal, ultra-rare blood disorder. We look forward to their continued excellence and are proud to call VIVA! Communications a partner at GLOBALHealthPR.

Head to VIVA’s blog for full coverage for full coverage of their success at the Golden Target Awards!

Last week we were honoured at the peak pharmaceutical industry ‘PRIME Awards’ with a highly-coveted Public Relations accolade.

 

Together with our client, bioCSL, we won the best ‘PR Campaign’ award for our highly innovative and integrated travel vaccines communications campaign entitled ‘Urging globetrotters, health professionals and travel consultants to prioritise travel health.’ [Read more…] about GLOBALHealthPR Partner VIVA! Communications Clinches Best PR Campaign at Premier Pharmaceutical Industry Event

Last week, Frannie Marmorstein and I were thrilled to head up to New York City to attend the PR News Platinum Awards Luncheon. We attended on behalf of Spectrum and GLOBALHealthPR, our partnership of international health care communications specialists, as a finalist in the “Pro Bono” category for our work on The Progeria Research Foundation’s (PRF) “Find the Other 150 Campaign”. And we won! This recognition, among the best of the best in the industry, was an honor for everyone involved in the campaign, and hopefully it will inspire others in the industry to leverage global collaboration for a cause they are passionate about.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Progeria, it is an extremely rare, rapid aging disease that causes children to age prematurely. Children with Progeria die of heart attacks or strokes at an average age of 13 years, so time is not on our side as we work to identify children around the world.

But this award isn’t the first time an important win has come out of this campaign. Every time a child is identified as a result of the campaign, it’s a win: a win for the child, because he or she will get the unique medical care he or she needs, a win for the child’s family, and a win for PRF, because these children help to advance research toward treatments and the cure for Progeria. We’ve identified 26 to date, a 48% increase in just two years (and 2 more since we submitted our entry for the award)!

We’ve blogged about the “Find the Other 150” campaign before. But the results keep getting better and better. In October 2009, only 54 children living with Progeria had been identified around the world. But experts believed that another 150 children around the world had not yet been identified or diagnosed. GLOBALHealthPR approached PRF about launching a global awareness campaign to search for unidentified children with Progeria. When the campaign began, PRF’s medical director said that if even ONE child was identified, the campaign would be a success. No one expected that we would be so successful so quickly.

So here we are two years and 26 children later (now totaling 80 children around the world with Progeria), and our campaign is going strong. Receiving the PR News Platinum Award at last week’s luncheon was a wonderful reward for our great work. But this campaign is nowhere close to finished. We will continue to work with our GLOBALHealthPR partners until we accomplish what we set out to do – Find the Other 150. And every time a new child is found and gets the support they need, that’s a win for us.

I learned several weeks ago that I’m to receive the Genetic Alliance “Art of Reporting” Award in June for Spectrum’s work on behalf of The Progeria Research Foundation‘s (PRF) “Find the Other 150” campaign. I want to publicly thank Genetic Alliance for recognizing this campaign and our commitment to such a rare disease.

Progeria is a rare, rapid aging disease in children and our client, PRF, is working to find a treatment and cure for this disease. As of October 2009, experts estimated that there were approximately 150 unidentified children with Progeria around the world. Spectrum and our global partners, GLOBALHealthPR, teamed up with PRF to launch a global communications effort to find these 150 children.

I am accepting this award on behalf of our team at Spectrum and our GLOBALHealthPR partners who bring their local market expertise to this global outreach effort. Our partners have been so instrumental in the success of this campaign, continually assisting with media outreach and support to find new and creative channels to spread PRF’s message.

This campaign is a great example of the power of strategic global communications. When we started the “Find the Other 150” campaign more than a year ago, the medical director of PRF said that if we found even one child, the campaign would be considered a success. Today, our efforts have led to the discovery of 17 children with Progeria from 12 countries around the world. Each child identified brings PRF one step closer to finding effective treatments and a cure. In addition, each child benefits from PRF’s unique medical care and is connected with trained medical professionals as well as other families of children with Progeria. PRF’s drive and determination is awe-inspiring and continues to be a daily motivation for our team.

As honored as I am to receive this award, I am just as honored to have the privilege to work with PRF, as well as serve on the organization’s board of directors. Our Spectrum team and GLOBALHealthPR partners are passionate about working with PRF to pursue the “Find the Other 150” mission of identifying children around the world with Progeria. We hope to continue to exceed their expectations in finding other children as the campaign continues.

I’ll report back on the Awards Ceremony in June. Thank you again, Genetic Alliance!