On October 25th, Jennifer Miller, The Gold Foundation’s Communications & Marketing Director, received a phone call with the offer of an incredible opportunity. There was an unused advertising time slot on the CBS Jumbotron in Times Square and Neutron Media, the managing company for the 20×26 foot screen, wanted to donate the time slot to a nonprofit. The Gold Foundation was the first call on their list of four organizations suggested to them. After Jennifer explained our mission and work, Neutron Media decided on the spot that we would be the ones to receive the ad time.
We had one week to choose a theme for our message, create a 10 second ad, and design an accompanying webpage. We decided on the theme “A doctor who listens is as good as gold” to emphasize the research-proven value of communication and compassion in every healthcare experience. We also wanted to emphasize that it takes real partnership to improve health outcomes, so the ad ends with a call to action for doctors to “listen up” and patients to “speak up”. Our finished product is below:
The Jumbotron is located on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. The ad is running once an hour for 18 hours a day from November 1, 2013 to January 1, 2014. On an average day, there are 465,000 people in Times Square, but this time span encompasses particularly high-traffic periods such as Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, the holiday shopping season, and New Year’s Eve.
Since our website is directed mainly toward the academic medicine community, we took this opportunity to create a webpage directed more toward the general public: www.thegoldfoundation.org . Links on the webpage lead to articles about scientific evidence that compassionate care improves health outcomes, a patient’s description of her healthcare experiences titled “Doctor vs Mechanic”, and short surveys for both doctors and patients. Even if you don’t have a chance to see our ad on the CBS Jumbotron in person, please consider taking our four question survey.
Our mission of creating humanistic physicians has always had the ultimate goal of benefitting patients. Over the past year, we have expanded our mission of keeping the care in health care to include all members of the healthcare team, including patients. The fortuitous donation of the CBS Jumbotron ad represents one of the first opportunities for us to speak directly with patients, broadcasting the message that everyone has a part to play in creating a good healthcare relationship.
