15 October 2008

The National Prescribing Service (NPS) has won the Public Relations Institute of Australia’s (PRIA) National Golden Target Award for Health Organisations with its multi-audience campaign that focused on better understanding of medicines choices.

The NPS became a national finalist for its Get to know your medicines and Generic medicines are an equal choice campaigns after winning the NSW state competition last month.

Earlier this year the campaigns also won the international 2008 International Association of Business Communicators’ Gold Quill Award for Excellence in Communication and are a national finalist in the Australian Marketing Institute’s Awards for Marketing Excellence.

The campaigns ran from August to December 2007 and aimed at raising confidence and understanding of generic medicines among senior Australians, with a focus on safety, quality and choice. They comprised TVCs, a phone helpline, printed resources, website and community information sessions.

The prestigious Golden Target Award was presented to the NPS at the PRIA’s annual dinner in Fremantle on Monday, 13 October.

NPS CEO, Lynn Weekes said it is vital that consumers have access to independent information on medicines. This is also important in relation to generic medicines as many still do not understand the difference between original and generic brands.

Dr Weekes said the PRIA award acknowledges the NPS’ strategic approach to promoting the quality use of medicines and providing sound information to healthcare professionals and consumers.

“Winning the award is a great achievement and a recognition of NPS’s commitment to excellence. I am immensely proud of the NPS staff who were involved in the campaign but would also like to acknowledge the pivotal role our partner organisations played in helping us to communicate these important medicines messages,” she said.

The PRIA judges praised the strategic planning and delivery of the components, saying it was an “excellent campaign which had clear, well explained goals and objectives, detailed target publics and good use of research. Evaluation was good and the results were excellent.”

“We received a record number of entries in the Golden Target Awards this year reflecting a high level of quality in Australian Public Relations. The Get to Know Your Medicines campaign reflects the outstanding efforts of the health PR industry in creating awareness and informing Australians of their options,” said Tracy Jones FPRIA, PRIA National President.

The two campaigns were conducted in partnership with the Consumers’ Health Forum of Australia, the Council on the Ageing (COTA), the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA),Medicare Australia and a range of internal working groups comprising consumer, academic and health professionals.

ENDS.

The National Prescribing Service Limited (NPS) is an independent, non-profit organisation for Quality Use of Medicine funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.