External Communications
& Public Health
For a public hungry for information about the pandemic, and in a climate of political polarization and misinformation, BH played an even larger role in 2021 as a source of reliable information, support and encouragement for the communities it serves.
Print, online and broadcast media stories on the pandemic included BH 1,262 times and CEO Mark Keroack, MD, 292 times during the year. This included a record 78 front page stories in the Springfield Republican. A total of 21 national placements highlighted BH stories on network and major cable news channels, including a feature story in the New York Times Magazine in November 2020 regarding the extraordinary efforts by Dr. Andrew Artenstein and his team to secure personal protective equipment on the grey market in New Jersey early in the pandemic. Website users grew 34% to 1.7M and page views 37% to 6.3M. A major multimedia campaign promoting vaccination in English, Spanish, and Russian (#BestShot) featured over 40 personal stories, with 20 specifically reaching the Black and Latino communities. Across TV, print and digital media, the campaign has received over 19M impressions to date. The Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs teams were honored with three crisis communications awards from Ragan Communications (Team of the Year, Social Media Response, and Media Response).
