Message from the Chair

Dear HCA Member
Further to my recent special alert about the HCA's Good Practice Guide and associated training, we thought it was time for a general update on progress with HCA activities. The plan is to report on progress every two months to ensure that all HCA members are kept fully up-to-speed with events as they unroll. Remember that HCA membership is corporate and so please ensure that this update is circulated to as many relevant people as possible within your organisation. Finally, if you have any questions or comments on the HCA's offerings please don't hesitate to get in touch - we look forward to hearing from you.

Julia Cook, Chair
 
Standards
The much-anticipated Good Practice Guide is nearing completion. The external consultation process is well underway and we are hopeful of final positive feedback to enable the Good Practice Guide to be launched in early Spring.
 
Membership and Marketing
2007 has already got off to a great start and we are delighted to have welcomed three new members to the HCA since our last update: Ketchum, Advocate and GCI. This brings the total to 63 corporate and associate members.

A number of activities have already come to fruition, or are underway. Thanks to a lot of hard work on the editorial features plan, one article has already appeared in the February edition of Pharmafocus and a further one in Pharmaceutical Times. The latter is based on findings from the HCA's Common Challenges Report (downloadable by clicking here) and is accompanied by a new advertisement which aims to raise awareness of the upcoming new initiatives for 2007. In addition, Julia Cook, on behalf of the HCA, has undertaken the first conference presentation of the year at the Thames Valley University conference on the reputation of the pharmaceutical industry.
 
Benchmarking
This year we have been carrying out some pre-marketing to encourage participation in this now well-established HCA service. As part of this we're emphasising that it is now an exclusive benefit of HCA membership. Key elements of the agency survey (financial and human resources) will remain constant to allow year-on-year comparisons, but a special focus on procurement will be a feature this year. April 21st is the date when the survey is due to be distributed, so do watch out for it!
 
Training
A full training schedule is planned for 2007 and the first event, the Media Relations Workshop, is confirmed for 18 April. A full online registration and payment system is now available on this website where you can view the full training calendar.

There will be some important new additions to the training agenda, including Good Practice workshops, based upon the imminent Good Practice Guide, targeted for May/June and September.
 
RoI & Evaluation
There are two very important new initiatives in the pipeline for 2007 and these are the Online Electronic Toolkit (OET), due for official launch very soon and development of the Cost:Impact Model. A feature on 'RoI for PR' will appear in April's edition of Pharmaceutical Marketing, written by Julia Cook, and will help to showcase both the OET and Cost:Impact model in context.
 
Recruitment
The recently created HCA job portal is now being actively used with nine advertisements appearing since December 2006.

As part of the ongoing effort to attract people into our industry at the entry level, a graduate careers leaflet has been created and a PDF will be posted on the HCA website shortly, with hard copies printed for distribution to target universities. Next in the plan is an alumni initiative, which is due to be instigated in April.

A freelancer focus group is planned for May, to inform future sub-committee work programmes and provide insights to HCA members.

In terms of the ongoing programme of work, we are compiling a range of interesting case studies of healthcare communicators to use in editorial, at careers fairs and in HCA literature, and have provided input on healthcare communications for the new careers page on the ABPI website.

Finally, we are pleased to report the PRCA has set up a link from its website to the careers section of the website.