We’re pleased to announce the selection of the 2012 unNiched Fellow.  unNiched is the Path of the Blue Eye Project’s live event series featuring conversation and collaboration around new and innovative trends in health marketing and communications.

Our fellow, Krisleigh Hoermann, hails from the American Heart Association and serves as community manager for the organization.  As the voice of AHA online, Hoermann is responsible for connecting the brand with online audiences, creating communities and building the nonprofit online. She also focuses on emerging digital communications strategy for the organization.  Prior to joining AHA, Hoermann provided public relations and social media strategy to organizations in a variety of industries, including nonprofit, healthcare, event, retail, energy and finance.

Please join us in congratulating Hoermann for her fellowship and welcoming her to the Path of the Blue Eye Project family.

We’d also like to extend a big thank you to our 2011 Fellow Amelia Burke for her enthusiasm and support during her fellowship.

Learn more about the unNiched fellowship program by clicking here.

unNiched(micro) – Scratch, Sniff and Learn
October 25, 2011 – CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY
8:00 – 11:45 a.m. (Breakfast Begins at 7:30 a.m.)
Admission Fee: $25.00
Twitter Hashtag: #uniched
Update: Case Studies, Podcasts and Other Outputs from the Event Can be Accessed Here

Technology is driving innovation in the health sector.  From using Twitter to track disease outbreaks to developing mobile applications that aggregate Big Data to motivate and inform patients, the digitization of health is accelerating daily.  Given these trends it is not surprising that people have increasingly been utilizing digital tools to persuade, inform and rally the public around health and wellness.

In August 2011, we put out a call for submissions from individuals who are leveraging a range of tools and technologies to transform how we communicate about health.  We’ve selected seven innovations — some early stage, others quite mature — designed to spark thinking and ideas about how best to educate people and encourage them to improve or alter their health behaviors. We’d like to thank all those who submitted innovations.

Join us for a very special unNiched(micro) breakfast event, “Scratch, Sniff and Learn.” Attendees will not only hear about these innovations from presenters, but get hands-on experience playing with many of them at specially prepared exhibits during the event.  See below to learn about what you’ll experience on October 25.  Reserve your seat here.

• What Do Health Consumers Want? Setting the Stage with Edelman’s Health Barometer: Context is everything, which is why we’re starting the morning with a deep dive into newly released data from Edelman’s Health Barometer.  This global survey examining how people are managing and seeking information related to health and wellness will set the stage for the morning’s experiences.

• Fast Forward Health, Visualizing Public Health via Film: On November 1, Andre Blackman, health innovator and director of digital communications and new media at the American Heart Association, will launch Fast Forward Health.  This film festival is designed to showcase innovations in public and community health.  We’ll be screening a short film from Fast Forward Health focusing on the link between walkable communities and physical activity.  Blackman will be on hand to participate in a remote discussion focusing on how visual media can spark behavior change and give public health added star power.

• Twitter As a Public Health Innovation Engine, Introducing Anonymous 11: For public health professionals, successfully educating and persuading starts with knowledge.  What works, what doesn’t, what’s happening?  All these questions are being asked and answered on Twitter.  Anonymous 11 is an early-stage information engine.  It is designed to  evolve into a robust set of tools that will provide people in public health with instant access to data, knowledge and expertise.  Eventually this Twitter-based data will aid the successful completion of a range of health objectives.

• Untethering and Improving Urban and Rural Health with Mobile from Ghana: The Mobile Technology for Community Health (MoTeCH) initiative is a collaboration between Columbia University, the Ghana Health Service and the Grameen Foundation.  Currently being trialed in 11 communities in northern Ghana, MoTeCH is expanding the boundaries of what is known and possible in the world of mobile health.  Experience how MoTeCH is improving pre- and post-natal health education and behaviors and how the program will evolve in the future.

• Fostering Dialogue, Education and Adherence in Migraine and Beyond: Riding the growing popularity and usefulness of mobile applications for health Ubiqi Health is developing technologies designed to improve patient care, adherence and understanding in a range of chronic conditions.  Ubiqi will demonstrate and discuss its successful initial applications in migraine and tour its evolving technology platform.

• Delivering Highly Personalized Health Information and Improved Outcomes via SMS:   Remote patient monitoring services have proliferated as the use of SMS, or texting technologies, have exploded in popularity globally. Learn how InStrat Global Health Solutions and Anadach Group are leveraging these technologies to deliver highly relevant and personalized health information to patients with sensitive conditions, including mental illness and HIV.

• Injecting Innovation into Health Decision-Makers’ Workflow with healthFORWARD 2.0: Sponsored by drug maker Sanofi, healthFORWARD 2.0 addresses a universal need to quickly and efficiently implement new strategies to improve patient health behaviors across organizations.  The site’s creators, Franklyn Healthcom, will discuss how this online community and resource hub is helping to communicate best practices and innovations to a range of decision-makers responsible for improving health outcomes at their organizations.

• Wearable Health Communications: Marketers from major brands such as Abercrombie and Fitch and Gap have long leveraged our willingness to deliver their messages on our bodies with great success. Now Zemoga has expanded on this strategy in the health realm by developing Teach-Shirts.  This clothing is designed to spread basic but important knowledge about healthy living and encourages small changes that may positively impact health and living conditions.  Learn about why the shirts were developed and how they will be used today and in the future.

• Toward the Storyification and Gamification of Health:  Gaming and storytelling are all the rage in marketing and communications.  But, what do these trends mean for health and why should we move past traditional thinking about how to leverage these techniques?  Via case studies and hands-on exercises, Ignite Health will show you how to create health marketing experiences that spark imaginations and improve behaviors.

Media Sponsors

Earlier this month we hosted our second unNiched(micro) breakfast at the CUNY Graduate Center in NYC. This event was dedicated to streaming the morning portion of the HHS/IOM Second Annual Health Data Initiative Forum in Washington, D.C. During the stream we moderated a panel discussion between Matthew Browning of Your Nurse Is On, and Krissy Goelz from Zemoga. We also hosted a very successful Tweet Chat thanks to our unNiched Fellow, Amelia Burke. At the height of our Tweet Chat we were reaching over 12,000 people on Twitter (according to our Tweet Reach Report).

The presentations in the morning session focused on 10 demonstrations that presented a range of tools and applications developed using health data, a series of discussion sessions, and a data and apps exposition where participants were able to directly interact with the tools being presented (which was happening in a different area of the NIH Campus where the DC event was being held and not shown on our stream). The companies presenting these apps and tools included Healthagen (iTriage), Aetna/Medicity, Ozioma, Healthline SPG, PatientsLikeMe, Maestro (Lumeris), MAYA Food Oasis, Asthmapolis, Multistate Foodborne Disease Outbreak Investigation System (FDOIS), and ElizaLIVE.

During their panel discussion, Matthew and Krissy were responding to questions and comments from our 25 audience members as well as people following the unNiched Tweet Chat at #unich. I thought I’d mention just a few of the most significant points in the conversation here in this post. Please feel free to keep the conversation going in the comments below.

• Why have Google Health and Microsoft Health both failed? Because user experience is key.
• Initializing a new movement to support technology access for the most at-risk patient groups.
• The inexpensiveness of technology (and social media) is obvious, however social costs (the effort to use, show or teach others) can be overwhelming.
• Health needs to recognize the 360 degree person and build the health message into natural environments.
• We need a top-down, bottom-up approach to making health relevant.

With each unNiched(micro) event we help our attendees gain a more articulate perspective related to health care communications. We’re hopeful that as our events continue, the conversations related to social media, technology, health data, mobile, will generate significant actionable results within the industry. Please let us know if you have any thoughts for upcoming unNiched(micro) events. We’re always open to new ideas, new participants and new conversations.

unNiched(micro) events would not be possible without the support from our media sponsor Pixels and Pills.

We’re holding a very special unNiched(micro) breakfast event, and you’re invited.  On June 9, the Path of the Blue Eye Project will host a New York City-based event in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM).  During the event, you’ll participate remotely in the HHS/IOM Health Data Forum, which is designed to showcase how health data is being used to improve outcomes and improve the dissemination and impact of health information.

We’ll also have speakers from HHS and leading health/marketing organizations like Zemoga on hand to discuss the implications and impact of liberated health data. Best of all, this event is absolutely free (breakfast will be served).  Won’t you join us?  Click here to learn more and to register.

On February 17, 2011, we held our first unNiched(micro) breakfast event.  Part of the Path of the Blue Eye Project, these live events are designed to provide attendees — primarily from the health marketing communications industry — with learning and networking opportunities.

The event speaker, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, heads up THINK-Health, a strategic health consultancy.  She led a lively lecture and discussion focusing on the promise and perils of mobile health.

To help spread the knowledge and information shared at the event, we are posting a video of Jane’s remarks and slides. We’d like to thank the wonderful folks at Pixels and Pills for filming the event and producing the video below.

View the Slides

Watch the Video

Additional Resources

• Listen to Jane talk about the hype and hope associated with mobile health in this episode of the Path of the Blue Eye Project’s podcast series, fyi: health marcomms – Listen
• Learn more about unNiched and unNiched(micro) events – Explore

Last year, we launched unNiched 2010, which we billed as a collaborative online and offline event for health marketing communications professionals.  It was a new concept, which incorporated hands-on learning with a dollop of social good (helping Lung  Cancer Alliance achieve its mission).  We were excited about the potential for this event, but decided to postpone it, after feedback from attendees, unNiched advisory board members and supporters.

Today, I’m excited to announce the relaunch of unNiched.  Our goal remains to cultivate and nurture a “community of practice” of health marketing communications professionals dedicated to deep collaboration, knowledge sharing and education.  unNiched has now become the Path of the Blue Eye Project’s live event series and is firmly within the Project’s overall mission.

unNiched has been reorganized into two components:

• unNiched(micro): A breakfast series where attendees receive education on digital marketing, mobile trends, public health communications, social media and more.
• unNiched(macro): A (planned) large-scale event for health marketing communications professionals featuring engaging speakers, deep education and practical, hands-on learning.

We’re excited about unNiched’s future potential.  Please note that we are still dedicated to fulfilling the social purpose I outlined in a blog post last summer.

Our First unNiched(micro) Event

I’m pleased to announce our first unNiched(micro) event, scheduled for February 17, 2011.  Titled, “Mobile Health: Hype and Hope,” this session features noted health economist, futurist and management consultant Jane Sarasohn-Kahn, who will:

• Separate hype from reality in current and future mobile trends
• Discuss how old and new mobile tech will power the Web of the future
• Outline how health organizations are leveraging mobile technologies to communicate with consumers and health providers while sparking behavior change today (and in the future)

Learn more about and register for this event here.  We hope to see you in New York City in February.

UPDATE:  unNiched has been relaunched and refreshed.  Click here to learn more and to register for our unNiched(micro) breakfast taking place in February 2011.

When I first conceived of unNiched 2010 earlier this year, I was excited about introducing the experiential learning techniques my firm Enspektos uses with its clients to a much larger audience.  I was also enthusiastic about working with unNiched 2010 participants to help a deserving non-profit organization, Lung Cancer Alliance.  I believe that our emphasis on doing good for the overall health marketing communications community and Lung Cancer Alliance compelled a range of organizations, including Edelman, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Johnson & Johnson, Pixels and Pills, and a group of prominent health communicators to support unNiched 2010.

I view the Path of the Blue Eye Project and unNiched 2010 as examples of my firm’s commitment to social entrepreneurship.  The essence of social entrepreneurship is that a business consciously pursues new initiatives with an eye toward doing social good rather than making a profit.

Engaging in social entrepreneurship may sound easy, but it still requires making some tough choices. The decision about how to price unNiched 2010 was especially difficult.  After much discussion with the unNiched 2010 advisory board, we decided to price the event so that we could recoup a portion of the significant human, facilities and technology costs associated with the event.  However, our pricing strategy was designed to ensure that as many people as possible would be able to attend.

Shifting Course

Over the last four months, we have spent a lot of time informing the health marketing community about unNiched 2010.  The good news is that people are excited about unNiched 2010.  The bad news is that this enthusiasm has not translated into participation.  One piece of feedback we have received is that although we think unNiched 2010 is reasonably priced, many individuals and companies believe it is still too expensive.  What to do?

Let me be clear that I believe that the learning experience provided by unNiched 2010 is highly valuable and absolutely essential.  This is because:

• We are being asked to do more with less: Our colleagues are being let go and we have to produce more in less time
• The important stuff is being cut first:  Staff development and training are often the first things to go in a tough economy, but it is needed even more as the world rapidly changes
• Collaboration is key, but we continue to hunker into our silos: We’re being asked to work together with others, but financial and economic pressures are encouraging us to compete rather than collaborate.  This is bad for business and the health marketing communications industry. Make no mistake, I think competition is essential and I enjoy winning as much as anyone.  However, I also believe should also be willing to support each other in appropriate ways — a rising tide lifts all boats.
• Theory is nice, but learning how to implement is better:  You can’t be told how to drive a car; doing it effectively requires getting behind the wheel.  Many people at health marketing communications events will tell you how to develop stellar initiatives.  At unNiched 2010, you’ll be shown how to do it.

However, unNiched 2010 is valueless if people are telling me that they can’t participate because of our pricing structure.  So, to ensure as many people as possible have access to the rich learning experience that is unNiched 2010, I have cut our rates to $195 per person.  If that’s still too high a price barrier for some, then I encourage qualifying individuals to apply to our unNiched Fellowship program.

(Please note that those who have already registered for unNiched 2010 at our previous rates will receive a refund for the price difference.)

Fulfilling the social promise of unNiched 2010 requires investing time, energy and enthusiasm.  We’re more than willing to give what’s required.  I hope you’ll join us.

Earlier this month, Laurie Fenton Ambrose  and I conducted a series of interviews that were aired on a popular New York City-area news radio station, WCBS-AM.  The interviews focused on our Lung Cancer Perceptions study, the work of Lung Cancer Alliance and what unNiched 2010 is designed to achieve.

You can listen to the full interviews and selected clips by clicking the links below.

• WCBS-AM unNiched 2010 Interview: Laurie Fenton Ambrose (1st Broadcast)
• WCBS-AM unNiched 2010 Interview: Laurie Fenton Ambrose (2nd Broadcast)
• WCBS-AM unNiched 2010 Interview: Laurie Fenton Ambrose (Full Interview, 7+ minutes)
• WCBS-AM unNiched 2010 Interview: Fard Johnmar (1st Broadcast)
• WCBS-AM unNiched 2010 Interview: Fard Johnmar (Full Interview, 7+ Minutes)

Americans' Pessimism About Lung Cancer Runs Deep (Click Image to View Data)

Today, Lung Cancer Alliance (LCA), our non-profit partner and “client” for unNiched 2010, issued an announcement about a new survey we produced especially for the event.  The Lung Cancer Perceptions study was conducted to achieve two objectives:

1. Shed additional light on the immense emotional and perceptual barriers the lung cancer community faces in its quest to achieve better treatment, support and recognition

2. Provide valuable data to people participating in unNiched 2010 as they apply the communications and collaboration skills they’ll gain during our online events to develop blueprints for educational initiatives that will be handed to the Lung Cancer Alliance for future use

From the LCA press release:

“A national survey announced today by Lung Cancer Alliance (LCA), sheds more light on why support for people affected by lung cancer remains low.  The poll indicates Americans are more likely to view lung cancer as “hopeless” and “untreatable” when compared with a diagnosis of breast or colon cancer.  In addition, 26% of Americans believe lung cancer is largely ’self-inflicted.’”

While we know that many are less likely to support people with lung cancer because patients are blamed for developing the condition, the study reveals that something else may be contributing to apathy about lung cancer: intense pessimism.  For example, although breast cancer is clearly deadly, the hard work of researchers, patients, caregivers and others have given the public a sense of hope about the condition.  For example, we found that 67% of Americans view breast cancer as “treatable” and many say they feel “hopeful” about the disease.

The Design Phase of the unNiched Innovation Model

Is Americans’ pessimism about Lung Cancer justified?  Perhaps not. Over the last decade, research into the causes and management of lung cancer has accelerated. For example, LCA notes: “advances in lung cancer treatment include new surgical and radiation techniques and therapies that target a particular aspect of the cancer.” Targeted therapies have shown the most promise, as they are able to attack cancerous cells while leaving healthy cells intact.
Moreover, LCA reports that only 16% of lung cancer is diagnosed at its earliest and most curable stage.

While Lung Cancer Alliance is already doing a lot to change perceptions about lung cancer, more can be done and people attending unNiched 2010 will be able to help.

The Lung Cancer Perceptions Study and Our unNiched Innovation Model

True innovation in health marketing communications can only take place if one has the right tools, and data is critical.  The full results of the unNiched 2010 Lung Cancer Perceptions study will be unveiled during the live portion of unNiched 2010, scheduled to take place on November 1 and 2.  Participants will use the study while working through the Design phase of our unNiched Innovation Model, which calls for health marketers to “feel” the problem or unmet need from the perspective of audiences they seek to reach.  Because of this study, we know how Americans feel about lung cancer.  During unNiched 2010, attendees will work together to look for ways to change these perceptions.

To read an executive summary of the study, please click here.  Register for unNiched 2010 here.

Last week, we held the first installment of the Digital Dialogue for Good Tweet Chat series.  This digital conversation was produced in partnership with Reed Smith who created and maintains #hcmktg, an online community of health marketers based on Twitter.  The purpose of the series is to gather broad input on the problem unNiched 2010 participants will solve on behalf of the Lung Cancer Alliance.

The Digital Dialogue for Good tweet chat series illustrates the People phase of our unNiched Innovation Model; i.e., ensuring diverse perspectives are solicited, captured and distributed. (Click image to learn about our model.)

Participants provided great information and insights on how we can use health marketing communications tactics and strategies to make unsexy conditions, including HIV/AIDS and lung cancer, more acceptable to patients, physicians and the general public.  During the chat, people posted more than 115 tweets on this subject.

As mentioned previously, output from the chats will be used in two ways:

• Commentary and advice provided during the chats will be summarized and organized for unNiched 2010 participants; they will use this information during the event’s idea competition, unThink
• Content from all four chats will be published (along with commentary from Reed Smith and unNiched mentors) in a special free unNiched e-book (similar to Toby Bloomberg’s Social Media GPS publication); look for this e-book in December 2010

I’d like to thank everyone who participated in last week’s chat.  We couldn’t have done it without you.

The Next Digital Dialogue for Good Tweet Chat

We are already planning the next Digital Dialogue for Good chat, which will focus on outlining and changing perceptions of lung cancer versus other major cancers, such as breast and colon cancer. The chat will be fueled by a new national study commissioned by the Path of the Blue Eye Project (the health marketing community behind unNiched 2010).  Look for an announcement about the study (and the next digital conversation) in early July.

Reminder: unNiched 2010 Online Events Begin in August

If you are thinking about attending the live portion of unNiched 2010 in November, you should act soon.  Online unNiched events, which will educate you while preparing you for our event-wide idea competition, unThink, begin in late August.  Register now and get the full unNiched 2010 experience while taking advantage of our early bird rates.