THE VALUED VOICE

Wisconsin Hospital Association (WHA) President and CEO Eric Borgerding shared details of the Stop the COVID Spread! public education campaign with national health care quality leaders in a webinar organized by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and the IPRO Hospital Quality Improvement Contractor on March 31.

AIR representatives invited WHA to present the Stop the COVID Spread! public education campaign as a unique, collaborative case study befitting the event’s theme of “Partnering with Patients and Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
 
WHA has played a lead role in organizing and funding the Stop the COVID Spread! coalition, which was assembled in October 2020 and includes more than 135 of Wisconsin’s leading health care, business and advocacy organizations. Since its launch, the Stop the COVID Spread! coalition has advanced an aggressive, multi-channel campaign which includes seven public education announcements to date. The coalition’s public education campaign has drawn upon wide-ranging Wisconsin perspectives, from higher education leaders to professional athletes, frontline health care workers and (bipartisan) elected officials. Ads produced and distributed by the coalition have achieved an audience reach of well over 30 million on statewide television and radio. On digital platforms, the coalition’s ads have generated over 16 million impressions and reached more than six million devices across the state.
 
“The non-traditional advocacy role we assumed with this campaign had everything to do with influencing patient and public behaviors ultimately to assure that not only can we continue to care for COVID patients, but that we can also care for non-COVID patients,” Borgerding told the nearly 100 webinar attendees.