Yesterday I went to the Kaiser Family Foundation for a panel discussion on "The Health Blogosphere: What It Means for Policy Debates and Journalism."

One thing is for sure. While Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt, is a member of the "Health Blogosphere" with his own blog, he did not, at least at this event, contribute much to current policy debates. When asked two substantive questions on highly charged issues currently unfolding at the Department, Leavitt made it clear he was not there to make news.

(See the exchange here at 31:09)

Come on, Secretary. Where's the spirit?

While Leavitt wasn't willing to talk politics, he read excerpts of his blog. With good intention, Leavitt disclosed how blogging has introduced him into a new realm of communication - particularly because certain posts have struck dialogues with a new audience.

Unlike an unfettered blog, however, Leavitt said his team vets comments before they are or are not posted. (He called this a "monitored blog effort.") He also seemed in the dark about who his audience is - whether it is HHS employees, policy wonks or patient advocate groups.

Following Leavitt's opener, The Kaiser Family Foundation moderated a discussion on the growing influence of policy blogs inside the beltway - and how they represent the many communities affected by health care policy. One audience member actually rendered the panel silent - something you do not find often at Washington panels.

 "Could you make some comments on the demographics of the blogosphere? Today we seem to have white males…and you mentioned it (blogging) doesn't work if you're only preaching to the choir…"

The room fell silent and the panel looked awkwardly at the moderator. The panel was made up of five white males.  

"Somebody…?" The moderator begged.

Finally, Ezra Kline of The American Prospect spoke.

"I can say that I've found blogging is enormously open to young, white males. It has no gates if you are them. However, this is a conversation that has been tremendously controversial and long running in the blogosphere. Blogging does tilt male. It does tilt white.

The great problem…in blogging for diversity purposes…is that you had a strange dynamic…I'm just called a "political blogger"….but a female political blogger…she would be considered a "women's issues blogger."

Kline went on to say that the problem is not because there are not those diverse bloggers in the blogosphere - but instead that it is more about who gets the "invites, who Daily Kos links to, who is read by which communities."

Kline's point resonated with me as I had just read the day before about the BlogHer conference in San Francisco. The New York Times wrote about the conference in a piece called "Blogging's Glass Ceiling." And while another reputable blogging conference took place the same weekend, Netroots Nation, their report was placed in the Times' Politics section. BlogHer, on the other hand, was in Fashion & Style. Ouch.

All in all, the Kaiser Health Blogosphere event made the effort to bring health policy bloggers to the table .Unfortunately, it did not do much in the way of representing the presence of independent blogs like Health Wonk Review and The Health Care Blog or patient advocate blogs such as Patient Centric Healthcare and Lemonade Life.

Blogging, Health Policy, Kaiser Family Foundation, Michael Leavitt, New Media, Public Affairs

 It's easy to forget how lucky we are to be smack dab in the middle of everything here in Washington.  But having the opportunity to attend last week's National Journal-sponsored Health Care Policy Breakfast was a welcome reminder that DC is where key discussions happen and decisions are made.

The highlight of the breakfast was a debate between the 2008 presidential candidates' health policy advisers. Kavita Patel, representing Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, and Dan Crippen, representing Sen. John McCain's campaign, sat side-by-side while explaining what they view to be the pros and cons of each other's policies.

With only a few months until the official nominations are made at the Democratic National Convention on August 25-28 and the Republican National Convention on September 1-4, it was great to hear how both presumptive nominees would address the health care system. Even more exciting was contemplating the role health care policy will play in November's election.

An added plus that morning were representatives from the insurance and consumer industries. Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, and Ron Pollack, Founding Executive Director of Families USA, the national organization for health care consumers, weighed in on the candidates' policies.

Ignagni said that the main discussion surrounding McCain's proposal should be whether it makes sense to keep or scrap employer-sponsored health care. She also said the discussion surrounding Obama's policy should be whether or not it is responsible to give purchasing power to people who have had little to no experience with the health care system.

Pollack said that he considers Obama's plan more detailed, but that McCain's plan is more radical. Pollack said he favors Obama's policy because Obama wants to build on what is already in place today (including existing public and private programs) and, therefore, his plan is more gradual and realistic. Pollack noted that, in previous years, everyone's "second favorite choice was the status quo," but now there is a real demand for action. Pollack advised making health care an early priority in the next administration.

Congressional staffers, reporters, and representatives from medical associations, such as the National Community Pharmacists Organization, Disabled American Veterans, the American Public Health Association, the Healthcare Leadership Council, the American Hospital Association, and the Alzheimer's Association, packed the room.  And there I was- a public affairs intern in a room of CEOs, consultants, and government relations managers, sharing my excitement for the coming months.

True, it's almost too easy to ignore the awesome things going on around me. Motorcades, rallies, and speeches have become commonplace after two years in DC.  But this debate between the candidates' policy people about one of the election's most important issues- was definitely one of the coolest things I've stopped to do on my morning commute.

Campaign, Events, Health Policy, Internship, Public Affairs

Monday morning brought the unfortunate news that the Alzheimer's drug from Myriad Pharmaceuticals (a Spectrum client) did not show statistical significance in improving cognition or helping patients with day-to-day activities. The Company announced that it's discontinuing development of the drug, called Flurizan.

It's no surprise that all of the resulting media coverage yesterday focused on the financial implications to Myriad, its European partner Lundbeck, and investors. But I hope that in the days to follow that media and other online communities make mention of the profound setback to hope for Alzheimer's disease patients and families, whose stock will continue its decline. The now-broken promise that Flurizan meant to millions of people with Alzheimer's and those who advocate for them such as the Alzheimer's Association and the Alliance for Aging Research is a major setback, and worthy of much more coverage as well as continued resolve in research efforts. The toll on lives and costs to society from inadequately treated or prevented AD is mounting and unavoidable unless we succeed with major advances in drug discovery and development.

As much or as little as the cost of health care takes to the stage in the Presidential politicking through November, the next time Mssrs. Obama or McCain pledge to "go after the drug companies," ask yourself which companies. The ones investing - and risking - millions in Alzheimer's drug research?

-John Seng, Founder and President

Alzheimer’s, alzheimers disease, myriad

Not quite three weeks ago in this blog, I hinted at the announcement of a "pretty cool" information tool that we developed through Spectrum's partnership in GLOBALHealthPR.

If you're a global pharma marketing director or product communications manager, how do you keep all the regulatory do's and don't's straight, from Japan to Germany? What if somebody collected it all and published one simple guidebook?

Ooops, we just did it. And not again, but for the first time.

Ladies and gentleman, today's the premiere of The Global Guide to Pharma Marketing Codes, the first-ever compendium that reviews the widely varying guidelines to prescription drug marketing in major international markets.

Click here for a preview.

-John Seng, Founder and President

Global Public Relations, Health care industry, pharmaceutical industry, PR industry

The Public Affairs team just launched Health Care in the Capitol^®, a monthly e-newsletter that keeps pace with the rapidly changing landscape of health care policy on Capitol Hill. With Health Care in the Capitol^®, we will be an intelligent aggregator and editor of news with a keen outlook as to what's gaining traction among legislators and their staff. If you're strapped for time and not interested in poring through reams of language to find out what developments will speak to you and your business, Health Care in the Capitol^® will become your "go to" resource.

We'll make Health Care in the Capitol^® easy to navigate, interactive and engaging. We won't be using just articles to tell the stories, but video, audio, links to credible blogs and graphics - it's a fusion of health care news and digital media. To check out our inaugural issue, click here.

Coming up with content is the easy part - but anyone in communications knows it's all about creating a name or brand that stands apart. After much discourse, "Health Care in the Capitol" was suggested. We knew our readers would wonder, since we are located in Washington, aren't we talking about the nation's capital, as in the town? Or, are we referring to the Capitol, a campus of chambers and caucuses, Congressmen and corridors? Finally, after much back and forth, we decided to use "Capitol." In true form, we agreed that the newsletter, though reported from the nation's capital, is about the activity of the Capitol complex and the policy discussions, political debates and competing punditry that fill its halls.

We hope you will join us from the nation's capital as we distribute information and seek creative, innovative ways to communicate the legislative activities on Capitol Hill.

Cap•i•tol [kap-i-tl] n.
The building in Washington, D.C. where the U.S. Congress meets. Designed by self-taught architect, Dr. William Thornton, in 1792. A complex that includes Senate and House office buildings, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress and more. A campus that is central to the implementation of law, policy and a place that guides the national rhetoric of democratic politics.

Cap•i•tal [kap-i-tl] n.
The city or town that is the official seat of government in a country, state, etc. Ex: Washington is the capital of the U.S.

-Erica Anderson, Account Executive

health care issues, political world, politicos, Public Affairs

Last week, principals of leading independent public relations firms from nine countries spanning four continents gathered in Tokyo to share our expertise in health communications and to contrast health consumer and trade media characteristics between Japan and the US/Europe. We also shared with about 20 execs from Japan's most prestigious pharma companies the fundamentals of contemporary pharma marketing from a very tough Western world perspective right now.

Our organization is GLOBALHealthPR, and we're the largest independent public relations organization dedicated exclusively to healthcare communications worldwide. Spectrum was a founder.

I must acknowledge our friends at LBS Co. for graciously hosting the press conference, the pharma industry seminar and our annual meeting. Media who attended the press conference included the Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest newspaper in the world at more than 14,000,000 combined circulation for morning and evening editions; Japan Broadcasting Corporation, and Japan Medical Journal.

Since our meeting, we've announced the selection of Aurora, a London-based health-only communications firm, as our new UK partner. Click for more information about Aurora and GLOBALHealthPR.

Watch this space in the next several weeks for the announcement of a pretty cool pharma marketing tool developed by GLOBALHealthPR.

-John Seng, Founder and President

Global Partnership, Global Public Relations, Japan, PR industry

I noted with interest and concern the recent news that new, highly resistant strains of tuberculosis threaten populations around the world, particularly in Eastern Europe (5% of TB Cases Don't React to Some Drugs). A day earlier, the AP reported findings that "drug-resistant tuberculosis is spreading even faster than medical experts had feared." (WHO Says Drug-Resistant TB Spreads Fast) Is it only a matter of time until these cutting-edge strains find their way ashore the US? Actually, these wildcat threats are already here and more are just a transatlantic plane ride away.

For a glimmer of hope, elsewhere this week came news of innovation in treating bacterial infections (Synthetic bacteria-fighting organisms win Lemelson-MIT prize), thanks to an intrepid as well as incentivized 27-year old student from MIT who won a prize for devising a method for cultivating a new type of virus called a bacteriophage that would directly attack tuberculosis and other bacteria.

Readers of all these articles might conclude that the best hope against TB globally is wellsprings of wisdom such as MIT research contests. However, a "eureka" moment of discovery is only the beginning of the equation. The real promise in fully developing safe and effective treatments and even cures for killing diseases comes true with natural economic incentives to industry offered by the only two somewhat free markets that survive worldwide - the US and New Zealand. The health systems of all other countries want either patented drugs at little to no premium or no patent protections on pharmaceuticals at all.

Advantage TB, and lots of other killing diseases.

New strains are here with more en route. Seems TB is discovering a more hospitable environment for growth worldwide than pharmaceutical researchers and their employers.

-John Seng, Founder and President

Health care industry, health care issues, R&D, subsidize drug research

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and for this transgression, you have my deepest apologies. It took some pretty dramatic, positive news to break my logjam, but this morning’s news (WASHINGTON POST - US Cancer Death Rate Down) about the decline in cancer death rates did the trick.

The nation’s cancer research leadership needs to leverage these good findings from the American Cancer Society and continue pressuring Congress to increase funding for the National Cancer Institute. Today’s coverage cites double digit declines in cancer death rates for both women and men from 1990 through 2005. The irony is that since 2005, federal cancer research funding levels have been effectively frozen in time, increasing at the annual rate of 0.0275 percent, or less than three-hundredths of one percent! (Is that even statistically significant?)

We make progress fighting cancer inch-by-inch, but it’s progress nonetheless. Now’s the time to increase our investment in preventing, diagnosing and treating all kinds of cancer, and not by micro-percentages. Let’s raise priority for the most lethal tumor types such as pancreatic and liver cancers, as well as thoroughly examine why disparities exist in cancer incidence and outcomes among different populations.

With the ACS’s Cancer Facts and Figures 2008 in hand, now would also be a good time for Presidential and Congressional candidates to agree to stop bashing the pharmaceutical industry and instead develop more productive and hopeful messages about the importance of encouraging innovation in cancer diagnosis and treatment among the public and private sectors.

If it works, support it. And more than three-hundredths of one percent annually, please!

-John Seng, Founder and President

american cancer society, cancer, cancer research, clinical trials, Disease Awareness, Health care industry, Public Affairs, research funding

They’re dropping like flies. Independent healthcare PR agencies, that is. What happened? Was it a spring of discontent, a little gastric upset in the constitution? Perhaps a diet not rich enough?

Starting with Chamberlain Communications Group in February this year, then Dorland Health in March; next the UK’s Santé Communications in June; to just last week the granddaddy of Rx indies, Chandler Chicco Agency, an unusually hefty crop of leading health agencies has been harvested by international, conglomerate holding companies. I’ve weathered takeovers earlier in my career, working for health groups that had sold to Shandwick, WPP and the organization then called DMB&B (D’Arcy, McManus, Benton & Bowles), now part of Publicis Groupe. It wasn’t always pretty for the people at these firms. I can’t say that client work and people didn’t suffer, because they did. Not long after the DMB&B deal 12 years ago, I left that organization to launch Spectrum Science Communications.

Today, Spectrum ranks as one of the top three independent health only public relations firms in the US. We also stand as the largest health care communications operation in the nation’s capital. Each of the above former counterpart agencies once proclaimed the virtues of independence: greater focus on their people and their clients in ways they knew that only an O&O (owned and operated) operation could. Forsaking the O&O world, the newly adopted firms are just beginning to experience joys of the E-O, or earn-out. As they now begin to tout the benefits of being owned by somebody else. The price tag for CCA, $65 million, doesn’t sound like a lot of money – it is a lot of money! But people at a recently acquired firm who think that their new landlord has wheeled in a barrow of cash to liquidate the former owners and invest in the new firm had better think again. That’s not the way that E-Os work. Most of the money paid in the earn-out flows not from Fleet Street or Wall Street financiers but sits on paper, waiting to be squeezed out of ever-greater efficiencies from employees and clients. Bear in mind that cost-effectiveness for the new owner doesn’t necessarily confer benefits to the acquired agency’s current staff or clients. From my experience, efficiency ala E-Os equals grinding increased revenues out of fewer, cheaper workers toiling longer hours for more clients. The formula works, but only particularly well for the new owner. Hoping the stock price grows as they’ve just augmented the holding company’s bottom line, the new owners bank on riding a tide of current and hopefully growing revenues. Employees caught up in the shift best like it or lump it, those who aren’t laid off during the early belt-tightening. By the time clients discover their agency people and results are waning, it’s often late in the game. Account people get the blame, are fired or quit in frustration, and are soon replaced by a steady and willing supply of fresh-faced juniors.

Independence mattered when these other firms were independent. It was a mark of distinction, a selling-point in their press releases. Now, some firms claim that they’ll remain autonomous and that the new owners won’t meddle in operations. That sounds nice and could be true in the near term, but only during the E-O period if at all. The pressure on continued growth for the holding company and its share price will mandate the kind of economies that can’t help but creep beyond core administrative functions (HR, accounting, office management) into client services and staff compensation. What I find amusing with each of these recent acquisitions is how the new ownership claims that current clients will benefit from “synergies” and allied or integrated services from the other various companies already in the fold. But in the next breath company principals hasten to explain how no conflicts will exist because sibling companies under the same umbrella parent, and oftentimes same address, can maintain firewalls. In my book, you can’t have it both ways. It’s all about the people. For instance, a team in place representing a breast cancer therapy at the acquired firm encounters a conflict of interest if the acquiring firm works for another pharmaceutical marketer in the same category. Where does synergy cease and conflict begin in a given therapeutic category? More likely, it’s cloudy at best and the only referees are on the payroll.

Independent communications firms offer clients a real choice and value, too. In the good old days when General Motors sat atop the auto industry, no savvy consumer really thought he or she was comparing different choices by kicking the tires at Chevrolet, Buick or Pontiac dealerships, all selling GM brands. What incentive motivates a company to undercut the competition in a scenario in which there are few bona fide competitors? The same is true in shopping for public relations services, especially now in the health care communications domain. Clients should closely investigate current ownership, potential conflicts and real value before they continue with or assign new work to their PR firms. Corporate strategic sourcing and product managers should carefully examine these types of acquisitions and ask tough questions. Make choices, but carefully qualify the choices. The plan at Spectrum Science Communications is based on a pledge to remain independent, dedicated to our clients and staff, and committed to extensive and fruitful relations with each. I believe that independence makes a difference, naturally.

-John Seng, Founder and President

communications professionals, competitive landscape, PR industry

Christopher Lee in the Monday, 28 May 2007 WASHINGTON POST sounds a jarring wake-up call to the impending tragedy of reduced federal funding of the National Institutes of Health.

If Americans already know about these cutbacks facing researchers in cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and mental health and other diseases, we certainly don’t comprehend the looming disaster in human and economic costs. If we did, we’d express some outrage.

I love Mr. Lee’s quote from Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee: “Healthy people are a whole lot more productive than sick ones.”

My guess is that healthy people account for more votes, too. We shall see.

-John Seng, Founder and President

 

Alzheimer’s, cancer, Christopher Lee, heart disease, House Appropriations Committee, mental health, National Institutes of Health, Obey, Public Affairs