Health PR: Remains a Growth Area

Our population continues to age… People are living longer… Of course, our citizenry has become increasing conscious about their health… What does all mean? In essence, the future is bright for those engaged in the health PR profession. According to various sources, employment opportunities for health PR specialists should grow faster than the average for all occupations for the foreseeable future. There is an expected increase of 21%-35% in the number of jobs for health PR pros that will become available over this period of time. The demand for good healthcare public relations personnel will increase because of the need to keep the public informed about a variety of issues that could affect their daily lives. The delivery of healthcare services, products and information is a high touch undertaking that requires interaction – a dialogue, if you will -- among all stakeholders within the healthcare ecosystem. This is where health PR pros excel… Human beings require communication both for information exchange and for affective content that may accompany the information. Interpersonal communication is a key part of this interaction and has been transformed by the intelligent use of technology – primarily social media, which has found rapid adoption within the world of health PR. Health PR can play a key role in many areas. For example, raising product awareness among clinicians and patients. Confronting reimbursement a major issue is another. The refinement and communication of corporate or product messaging and positioning is yet another. Health PR pros can be helpful in developing programs to communicate a major piece of clinical data coming out as well as for mustering the support of influential advocacy groups. In seeking the right health PR counsel you seek those capable of meeting the demanding and always evolving communications needs of medical device, biotech, pharmaceutical and biopharma companies, as well as healthcare providers and the service companies that work with medical sector institutions. You should consider health PR professionals that can help you develop, refine and communicate your corporate and product messages to your diverse and critical constituencies: physicans, patients, payors, potential partners, investors, advocacy groups, and thought leaders. In addition, you need to have healthcare public relations pro that have experience with traditional as well as social media. Finally, the consummate health PR pro will have experience in dealing with companies of various sizes and with products in various stages of development. These include early-stage companies seeking to seed the market far in advance of product availability and attempting to raise capital, to companies in the latter stage of clinical trials and preparing a going-to-market strategy, to companies with mature, available products seeking to revitalize an aging brand.