Winner
Kate Pogson
Summary of work
After ten years working at the height of healthcare public relations, Kate recognised, in response to clients’ needs and the increasingly-competitive marketplace, that there was an increasing convergence of healthcare public relations and public affairs disciplines. This led to Kate making the move into the world of healthcare policy, building – and now leading – a successful, integrated healthcare communications practice; one in which the transparency and evidence of scientific communications is applied to the advocacy and discipline of public affairs. Under Kate’s leadership, MHP Health is now a team of specialist communicators, which come together to be ‘greater than the sum of their parts’, and one for which clients increasingly turn to for insight-led, integrated communications.
This is just one example of how Kate has looked to push the boundaries of healthcare communications in her career. Whether it is from looking outside of the healthcare ecosystem for inspiration to enhance the reputation of the industry; encouraging a more diverse workforce through support of social enterprise charities, or building academic partnerships to add scientific rigour to how we as communicators both identify and engage with influencers.
Judges’ comments
Kate is an excellent storyteller and she was very eloquent during her presentation. She is not only a true leader in healthcare communications, but she is a leader of the future. It became apparent very quickly that she is a visionary and Kate is exactly the type of person the judges were looking for. She had an outstanding yet intellectual presence, which blew the judges away. Her humility and her different style of leadership came as an added bonus. She is the whole package.
