The ACR will Effectively Communicate and Advance the Identity of the Organization and Rheumatology Professionals to Internal and External Constituencies.
Simple Tasks Campaign Continues to Build Momentum
In September, 2012, the Simple Tasks campaign celebrated its one-year anniversary. Shortly thereafter, it added two awards to its accolades – making it a three-time award winning campaign (having received awards for overall campaign strategy, white paper, and “State of Rheumatology” video).
Throughout the year, the campaign continued outreach out to lawmakers, referring physicians and health professionals, and others who influence the rheumatology community. Key messages in this campaign include:
The Communications and Marketing committee leveraged a number of tactics to encourage early and appropriate referrals to rheumatologists and to gain understanding of the severity of rheumatic diseases and the importance of rheumatologists.
Referring Physician and Health Professional Outreach: To continue outreach to the referring physician and health professional community, Simple Tasks exhibited at the annual meetings of the American College of Physicians and the American Academy of Family Physicians. This allowed the ACR to reach hundreds of referring physicians with the messages of the campaign as well as to provide them with resources on early and appropriate referral.
The campaign has also started creating educational opportunities for this audience that will help them increase their knowledge of rheumatology while underscoring the importance of working with rheumatologists in the care of their patients.
Lawmaker Outreach: The campaign continued to support the ACR’s Government Affairs Committee by reaching out to lawmakers to ensure they know who rheumatologists are and understand the value of rheumatology in the health care system. Through advertising, the creation of a Congress-specific campaign white paper, and hand-delivering campaign and ACR materials to key Congressional offices, the campaign provided enough up-front knowledge of rheumatology to allow ACR advocates more time to discuss about the ACR’s key legislative priorities in their visits with lawmakers.
Media Outreach: To prepare for media opportunities that will arise from ongoing media outreach, the Communications and Marketing Committee trained several ACR members and leaders to serve on the campaign speakers bureau.
The campaign continued to reach out to a number of media outlets such as, the Associated Press, National Journal , The New York Times (Washington D.C. Bureau), The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washingtonian, Women’s Health, Men’s Health, WebMD, Arthritis Today, and Ebony.
Additionally, the campaign held a radio media tour with James O’Dell, MD, which resulted in his giving interviews to 24 local, national and syndicated radio programs.
Campaign Symbol: The creation of a campaign symbol helped drive home the messages of the Simple Tasks campaign. A bent fork lapel pin was created for ACR members to wear during their Capitol Hill visits, while treating patients and in their day-to-day activities. While this has just started rolling out at ACR meetings, it has already become one of the most noticed and understandable tools in the campaign.
The Rheumatologist Enters its Seventh Year of Publication
Physician Editor, Simon Helfgott, MD, along with Associate Editors Richard Brasington, MD and Maura Iversen, PT, MPH, assumed editorial leadership for The Rheumatologist beginning with the January 2012 edition. The transition went smoothly, and the new editorial team has excelled at bringing its unique experience and perspectives to bear on the publication while maintaining its editorial excellence. Some of the new editorial team’s accomplishments include: increased meeting coverage, including highlights from the ACR State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium, the Annual Medical and Scientific Meeting of the California Rheumatology Alliance, and EULAR; publication of interesting medical cases with relevant teaching points through the “Fellow’s Forum Case Study” and “Dermatology Case Review” departments; and, coverage of novel applications of technology in rheumatology research and practice through “Tech Talk.”
Also in 2012 The Rheumatologist began publishing online-exclusive articles that highlight interesting research published outside of the mainstream rheumatology literature. Such online exclusives covered more than two dozen topics, including the world’s first officially-approved biosimilar; why winter is a hard season for patients with arthritis; ICD-10; risk factors for vision loss in uveitis associated with JIA; the role of nurse practitioners in rheumatology; new research on how therapies aimed at immune cell progenitors may reduce risk after myocardial infarction; a rheumatology patient’s perspective on exercise; and, audio interviews with leading rheumatologists.
Keeping Members Informed About Important Drug Safety and Other Breaking News
Three Hotlines were released in 2012: "Pegloticase and Concomitant Urate-lowering Therapies" (January 2012); "Update on Herpes Zoster (Shingles Vaccine for Autoimmune Disease Patients" (September 2012); and, "Tofacitinib for the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis" (December 2012).
In 2012, the Drug Safety Quarterly addressed an array of topics, including: a vaccination primer for rheumatologists; update on TNF inhibitor-induced psoriasis; cancer risk, RA and biologic therapy; off-label prescribing in rheumatology; pregnancy, lactation and drug safety websites; safety signals; drug safety news items; drug shortages; and more. Past issues are available online at www.rheumatology.org/publications.
Rheumatology Morning Wire continued in its fifth year of publication. Available to members only, this useful source of news and information selected from thousands of local, regional, national and international sources alerts members to medical news as it is reported in the media.
ACR Members Shape Rheumatology Headlines
The ACR continues to work with the media to ensure rheumatology issues and advancements are covered. This is done through proactively pitching the media throughout the year as well as responding to requests from the media.
In 2012, more than 50 ACR members served as Experts on Call for the media. These members participated in interviews, provided expertise about rheumatology-related subjects and responded to approximately 400 media requests. As a result, more than 200 news articles were generated about rheumatology in a variety of outlets including Huffington Post, Arthritis Today, Rheumatology News, About.com, Prevention Magazine, Reuters Health USA Today, The Atlantic magazine and Trade Show Executive.
Annual Meeting Research Continues to Be Well-Covered by Media
Every year, the Communications and Marketing Committee promotes newsworthy research from the ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting. In 2012, the Committee reviewed abstracts submitted and selected 22 studies that highlighted therapies, new technology, social media, economic impact and epidemiology. The ACR disseminated news releases about the abstracts, organized four press conferences, promoted these studies via social media, and arranged on-site interviews with press who attended the meeting.
This year’s annual meeting media efforts generated hundreds of articles in both mainstream media as well as trade publications such as Medscape, MedPage Today and Rheumatology News. The 2012 Annual Meeting also made headlines in Exhibitor’s Daily and Meetings Net for being the largest convention held in Washington, D.C. this year—taking up 50,336 room nights at 50 hotels during a five-day period.
Over 150 media covered the meeting on-site and many others covered it remotely. Media coverage of these studies (as well as other Annual Meeting studies of interest to the media) is expected to continue well into 2013.
Yearly Update Boosts Patients Resources and Reliability
The ACR offers nearly 100 free patient fact sheets—many of which are available in both English and Spanish—on diseases and conditions, medications and other topics of interest such as exercise and arthritis, clinical research trials and pregnancy. In 2012, the Communications and Marketing Committee updated all fact sheets under the ‘diseases and conditions,’ ‘medications,’ and ‘additional topics’ categories.
Moving forward, the committee aims for an annual review and update of these fact sheets to ensure the most up-to-date and accurate information is provided to its members’ patients.
Developed by ACR members and reviewed by the Communications and Marketing Committee, these fact sheets are viewed more than 100,000 times each month. Every member is encouraged to place these fact sheets in waiting and exam rooms, distribute them to patients during a consultation, and post/link to them on the practice/institution website.