WASHINGTON – The Howard University Office of University Communications (OUC) is the recipient of the 2020 PRWeek Award for Best in a Crisis for their work on the #HowardMedicineMatters campaign.  

“It is quite an honor to receive this prestigious award from PRWeek and to be recognized among our industry peers,” said Alonda Thomas, interim vice president of University Communications. “The #HowardMedicineMatters project was a true team effort to launch a grassroots awareness campaign to protect Howard’s healthcare professional programs, preserve our ability to train our diverse student population and continue to serve our local community’s need for high-quality medical care.”

With one week to prepare the messaging, visuals and collateral, the Howard University Office of University Communications launched #HowardMedicineMatters in December 2018 to encourage public support of Howard’s College of Medicine to have an academic affiliation agreement with the newly proposed East End hospital. From Dec. 1 to Dec. 4, the campaign generated: 410 hashtag references on Instagram, 1K retweets of campaign posts on Twitter, 2,650 clicks to the microsite via Bit.ly, 3,176 Action Network letters, 75 media placements, web traffic of more than 17K page views and more than 3 million media impressions. As a result, an amendment to include Howard in the bill was approved by the DC Council.

“Thanks to the Office of University Communications, we were able to effectively tell the story of Howard University’s role as the primary pipeline of African American healthcare professionals to the District of Columbia and the nation. As a result, we began to have positive conversations with the City that ultimately led to support for Howard University to have its own new hospital facility by 2026,”  said President Wayne A. I. Frederick. “The PRWeek Award symbolizes the excellence that the Office of University Communications brings to our campus each day and the recognition is well deserved and appreciated.”

The PRWeek U.S. Awards are viewed as one of the communications industry's highest honors. They reward the best of the best corporate, agency, nonprofit and education teams, with only 41 trophies awarded each year.

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