The coronavirus pandemic, this epoch’s Pearl Harbor or 9/11, forced a strategic reboot for our clients trying heroically to keep their patients and doctors safe.

It also presented a giant obstacle to earning coverage in historically beleaguered news outlets that had to be repeatedly reminded of the downstream impacts of the pandemic on cancer patients, babies, and the medical profession itself.

With a great deal of perseverance, we placed a major New York Times piece for the Community Oncology Alliance about the plight of patients with cancer who missed critical screenings.

Featuring the HealthySteps program, USA Today ran a big story about the importance of wraparound care for babies and their families, despite the pandemic.

And for the American Board of Internal Medicine, their leaders spoke out in Medpage Today for doctors facing burnout and in Stat News, against national leaders who flouted common sense protections.

The bane of oncologists and their patients are the middleman companies in the pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) industry. Empowered ostensibly to reduce exorbitantly high drug costs, the oligopoly of rich, vertically integrated companies frequently delay and deny care to cancer patients, jeopardizing their health and undermining their oncologists.

The Community Oncology Alliance (COA) had us shed light on their dubious practices to stimulate interest in reform in Washington.

The news media was receptive to the message of PBMs playing doctor without a medical license.

We mined COA practices for doctor and patient stories to dramatize the scandal based on our methods resulting in a flurry of coverage in outlets ranging from The Atlantic, to The Fresno Bee to Medscape Medical News, to the New Orleans Time Picayune to Marketplace, to The Doctors.

The PBMs continue exercising every delaying tactic in their arsenal, but now at least Congress has gotten the message.

It didn’t take long for the National Council for Behavioral Health to realize that the effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was an existential threat to its mental health and addiction center members, and their Medicaid clients. Aaron Cohen PR devised a storytelling strategy to persuade legislators that their actions would do more harm than good to Medicaid recipients.

We mined the Council’s members for patient stories and met Samuel and Ornella, both from D.C., and Jessica from New Jersey. Their narratives, plus our relationships with the right reporters, were the essential ingredients in USA Today, NPR and Vox.com stories placed at key points in the congressional debate.

No office worker or cop leaves their personal emotional problems when they leave home in the morning, making the daylong Mental Health First Aid course, managed by the National Council, imperative in professional settings.

More than a million Americans have taken the first-aid-for-the-mind course to manage their own, or their co-workers’ and family’s emotional crises and get them into treatment.

We sent reporters back to school to learn how people ranging from office workers to prisoners to police are applying the teachings in their daily lives and reporting on their findings.

Coverage included: Bloomberg, CNN, WRC-TV, The Washington Post, The Hill

Optica is a new scientific journal in the field of optics and photonics that has given mankind laser surgery to heal the smallest of wounds, and telescopes to see distant galaxies.

Currently, scientists are utilizing moth eyes to attack glare, optical clocks to redefine the second and 3D displays and laser-generated bubbles to better see the inside of a medical patient.

In partnership with the university community we’re increasing the impact of the journal, and elevating the status of optics among the field’s leaders and beyond.

Getting the mainstream media to cover quantum physics is not easy, but as a result of our efforts, The Wall Street Journal , NPR.org, Gizmodo, CNN, Scientific American, and Medgadget are covering optics and photonics.

Nobody wants to talk about dying. But in a refreshingly clear new book, Harvard Dr. Angelo Volandes insists that patients, families and the medical establishment talk frankly and realistically when the end is near.

Influential media outlets like AP, AARP Bulletin, NPR, Forbes, The Washington Post took notice and delivered the message.

As a result, sales of the book, The Conversation, doubled.

Employee benefits managers had a lot on the line when the Supreme Court decided to legalize gay marriages and maintain a central tenet of the Affordable Care Act, all in the same term.

Business groups wanted to speak out, so The ERISA Industry Committee, which represents over 100 large companies hired us to get into the competitive SCOTUS news cycle.

We succeeded with coverage in USA Today, Business Insurance and Kaiser Health News.

It would come as no surprise to Americans on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, but a new U.S. Conference of Mayors report documented a gradual and dramatic shift in income inequality over four decades.

As the U.S. Conference of Mayors wanted mayors front and center with media to tell the story, we booked the mayor of Dayton, Ohio live on NPR’s All Things Considered to tell the tale.

ComfyTree: The Washington Post, Washington Business Journal

With no roadmap for Washington D.C.’s marijuana entrepreneurs, ComfyTree brought their traveling pot B-school to where marijuana had just become legal.

To drive attendance to their conference, we advanced stories to The Washington Post and Washington Business Journal. Plus we arranged onsite coverage by local media outlets including WRC (NBC), WUSA (CBS) and WTOP Radio.

The conference sold out! And ComfyTree’s business took off.

Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC)- AP

In 2010, Obamacare had just become law. Hospitals were facing penalties for too many deadly infections. And the frontline health care workers charged with keeping infections at bay were somewhat unknown. We called on the AP to help explain what they called the “germ cop.”

Click here to read the placement.

United Technologies’ Pratt and Whitney- Wall Street Journal

When the F-35 jet engine maker, United Technologies’ biggest unit, came under withering government attack, we recommended fighting back, one reporter at a time. We took Pratt’s leader from desk-side to desk-side to make the case that costs were being controlled.

The Wall Street Journal was our first stop.

Click here to read the article.

Foundation Fighting Blindness- CNBC’s Squawk Box

Wealthy, successful, famous and determined. Businessman and philanthropist Gordon Gund, blind since he was 30, challenged the world to help raise $100 million for research to cure blindness. We booked Gund on the business channel’s most watched program to make his powerful pitch directly to America’s highest net worth individuals.