ChenMed's #VaxTheNation Campaign Wins Two PR Daily Awards

ChenMed, a national leader in primary care for underserved seniors, announced that its COVID-19 #VaxTheNation Integrated Campaign won the top prize in two categories for PR Daily’s Media Relations Awards. The 15-month communications campaign boosted vaccination rates for patients, employees, and community members and challenged misinformation about the vaccine.

PR Daily’s Media Relations Awards celebrates the innovative strategies that secured media coverage and the people and teams that excelled in crafting engaging stories. Ragan held a special award celebration on December 12 at the Yale Club in New York City, recognizing the best media relations work from the past year and naming ChenMed the winner for both Integrated Marketing Communications Campaigns and COVID-19 Communications Campaigns.

ChenMed’s campaign was chosen from a wide pool of entries and was honored alongside work from other winning companies including UPS, ESPN, Carnival Cruise Line, Mars Petcare US, and Intel Corporation. A full list of winners and their featured profiles can be found here.

ChenMed’s corporate communications and clinical teams recognized the importance of the approval of the COVID-19 vaccine on public health. They saw the vaccine’s distribution as another channel to serve its patients and the communities in which it operates by offering vaccinations to seniors and ChenMed team members. It was also a way to build relationships with local community organizations, hospitals and elected officials and expand ChenMed’s brand recognition and reach. 

The initiative focused on three audiences: employees, patients, and the public. The ChenMed teams deployed a range of tactics including messages about workplace safety for employees, public health messages for its senior patients to stay at home, and the importance of getting everyone vaccinated. The ChenMed communications team designed signage for breakrooms and bathrooms, flyers, lanyards and branded lapel pins, masks, shirts, hats, buttons, stickers and more, all while addressing equity issues and misinformation around the vaccine. 

The campaign was also a tool to recruit new doctors and included a series of public service announcements (PSAs) on billboards and 176 COVID-19 “Ask the Doctors” telephone town halls for the public that reached more than 630,000 at-risk seniors, with more than 120 of ChenMed’s doctors participating on panels. 

ChenMed’s #VaxTheNation social media posts earned 183,000 organic impressions and a 5.55% average engagement rate. From March 1, 2020, to June 1, 2021, social media efforts on Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn hit 49,196 followers with 451 published posts, generating 196,265 impressions and a 5.84% engagement rate. 

“We are enormously proud of our corporate communications and clinical teams for designing and implementing this incredibly comprehensive campaign. The message of ‘get vaccinated’ really saturated all of the markets we serve,” said Marke Dickinson, Chief Marketing Officer at ChenMed. “Even more than the award recognition, we are proud of the real-world results. Nearly 100% of ChenMed employees and more than 90% of its patients, all seniors on Medicare, received the vaccine. This program truly saved lives.”

ChenMed has been recognized for its accomplishment in a special write-up on Ragan’s internationally read news website.

“ChenMed set itself apart from an outstanding field of entrants. Their work was exceptional and displayed their innovative strategies for achieving success. Congratulations, ChenMed. We look forward to your continued success,” said Brendan Gannon, Senior Marketing Manager for Awards Programs at Ragan Communications.

About ChenMed

ChenMed is a privately-owned medical, management and technology company that delivers the high-touch and personalized primary care Medicare-eligible seniors need to enjoy better health. Headquartered in Miami, the company operates more than 120 senior medical centers in 15 states. Twice named a “Most Loved Workplace” by Newsweek, named one of Fortune’s “Change the World” companies, and a certified Great Place to Work® by the Great Place to Work Institute, ChenMed brings concierge-style medicine and better health outcomes to the neediest populations. ChenMed brands include Chen Senior Medical Center, Dedicated Senior Medical Center, JenCare Senior Medical Center, and IntuneHealth. Its leading healthcare technology organization, Curity™, was recently named a “Best Place to Work in IT" by ComputerWorld.

About Ragan Communications

Ragan Communications and PR Daily run 15 awards programs each year, including the prestigious PR Daily Awards, Top Women in Communications Awards and Employee Communications Awards. These programs honor the top work in communications, PR, marketing, media and HR. Ragan Communications has been delivering trusted news, training and intelligence for more than 50 years to internal and external communicators and business executives via its conferences, webinars, training, awards, subscriptions and its membership divisions. Its daily news sites—PRDaily.com, Ragan.com and RaganWellness.com—are read by more than 600,000 internal and external communicators and HR professionals monthly.