Multi-year campaign supported ground-breaking NIH study.

Case Study: National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases (NIH-NIDDK)

Client: National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases (NIH-NIDDK) conducts, supports and coordinates government nutrition research efforts and large-scale clinical trials.

Challenge: The principal investigator of the first full-scale study on the links between hypertension and kidney disease in African Americans – a ground-breaking initiative launched in 1994 – confronted barriers to enlisting study participants.  A sordid history rooted in the infamous Tuskegee study seeded a deep distrust within the African American community in government health studies.

Solution: From 1994 to 1998, McKinney, then known as McKinney & McDowell Associates, worked with NIH-NIDDK to launch the 10-city pilot study and subsequent full-scale trial probing the affects of kidney disease and hypertension on African Americans.  Over a span of four years, McKinney & McDowell provided an extensive array of deliverables, including the development of a media guide, a step-by-step manual to assist local clinics participating in the study to generate their own media; the staging of several colloquia and receptions, which provided NIDDK officials and local clinic leaders with a forum to promote the program with physicians and community leaders; select story placements in major national publications, including Essence magazine and USA Today, and news conferences in at targeted sites where other intensive story placement and media outreach activities were being conducted.  The firm also arranged meetings and presentations for NIDDK principals with national African American opinion leaders.  

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With over 19 years experience in advocacy communications, McKinney has a keen understanding of how communications drives policy.  The firm has forged a particular niche in advancing the causes of organizations devoted to social justice and has worked extensively with labor, nonprofit, advocacy organizations whose missions affect policy and people locally, nationally and globally.

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