Valley PR Blog

How St. Luke’s Health Initiatives is using social media

By Linda VandeVrede on August 10th, 2009 In Social Media

I wasn’t surprised at all that the very first person to respond to my request last Friday for examples of social media real-life applications was Francine Hardaway. 

She is implementing a social media strategy for St. Luke’s Health Initiatives, which became a foundation when St. Luke’s Hospital was purchased by a for-profit corporation. Their goal is to foster community health. They have four main areas, including policy research, community grants, direct medical assistance, and support to affiliate organizations.

The problem is that it is difficult for them to raise awareness outside their own circle, according to Francine. She is an outsourced resource to supplement the efforts of the internal communications VP.  Their social media campaign now includes a Facebook group, a twitter page, and a blog. “St. Luke’s already has an engaged community, and I am not interacting with the existing community at all — only with people in online communities who don’t know about SLHI.”

So far, there are 91 people in the Facebook group who receive regular information about health issues in Arizona. Francine maintains the blog and talks about the Arizona Health Survey, the TAP program (Technical Assistance Partnership), and the September 25th Rationing Conference (an event to discuss the ethics of health care rationing). She educates on health care reform as it pertains to the state of Arizona. She also communicates with Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona’s representative to Obama’s health policy group.   The three-pronged campaign is aimed at further improving the communications of a foundation by keeping it relevant and moving forward.

Did your client ask for social media?  They knew it was “out there,” but weren’t sure how to use it.  They trusted me.  My goals for the task were to get their community moved off a proprietary platform they were paying for and onto WordPress, reinvigorate the blog, and see whether Facebook and twitter will grow their community beyond health professionals and nonprofits into the larger community.

What will be your metric of success?  Growing a community. Getting new people involved. Getting followers, friends, and people who reach out and help spread information that makes the community health or a more resilient. There is so much information out there. SLHI is a wonderful organization doing great things, and they often don’t get attention in normal ways.

What was your starting point?  The blog. I use Facebook and twitter to send people to the blog and also to pass information about things like the correlation between lack of health insurance and lack of health information. I also use it to announce events. I used it to announce the sign-ups for the TAP program, to announce the last TAP Talk, and I am now trying to get a big audience for the 9/25 program on rationing.

What’s your evaluation so far?  I’ve made some progress, but I think this is a year-long project to get real traction. Also, the downside of twitter is the rapid growth, which got us followers that don’t matter. I am slowly weeding through them and trying to get it down to a more select group. Social media is not for sissies; it demands constant attention, shifting of tactics and engagement in a conversation.

You can find out more about St. Luke’s Health Initiatives here:

http://Twitter.com/slhi
Facebook | St. Lukes Health Initiatives http://bit.ly/OWnOZ (for Facebook users)
and  http://www.arizonahealthfutures.org/blog/

Share This

Hide Sites

Want Your Picture Icon? Go to gravatar.com and set a picture up to your email address for free. It also works on thousands of other websites, too!