The Healthcare Fellows is a formal executive education program focused on the many business sectors in Louisville’s vast healthcare ecosystem. Fellows are tasked with completing a group project that has a community or economic impact. Current projects include quantifying the positive economic impact older adults have on the region’s economy; developing a marketing and communications plan to help raise awareness of the Alzheimer’s Association’s programs; and creating a Kentucky Nurse Resource Book that profiles Kentucky nurses and promotes existing areas of excellence. 

Project: Kentucky Nurses Association (KNA) – Nursing Asset Resource

Co-Leaders: Holly Symonds Clark, Deputy Director, Commercialization EPI-Center, UofL and Jill Gaines, Associate Director of Admissions and Community Partnership Development, Egan Leadership Center, Spalding University

2020 is the Year of the Nurse and Midwife as declared by the World Health Organization in honor of the 200^th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birthday.

Due to the current health pandemic, 2020 is also the year that nurses are on the front lines – delivering the majority of patient care to global populations devastated by Coronavirus-19 infection.

The Kentucky Nurses Association (KNA), established in 1906, is dedicated to the nursing profession in Kentucky by promoting the role of Kentucky nurses in health care delivery and advocating for quality patient care.

As a new initiative during the Year of the Nurse, KNA introduced its plan to develop the first edition of an Annual Kentucky Nurse Resource Book.  KNA wants the broad community to recognize that the nursing profession is constantly evolving.  The nurses of the 21^st century have many different faces and come from many different backgrounds, and they are all dedicated to protecting public health.  KNA’s Nurse Resource Book will introduce the public to the various faces, names and outstanding expertise of nurses across the Commonwealth.

The role of our Healthcare Enterprise Network (HEN) Fellows team is to help KNA market the new Nurse Resource Book, as follows: (1) Inward – to nurses to register their information for the book, and (2) Outward to the greater community to highlight nurses for recruiting, education and other purposes.

KNA is accepting registration submissions from nurses until October 1, 2020.   Prior to the deadline, the Fellows Team is working to market the Nurse Resource Book through the following activities:

• We are developing attractive text to add excitement to the Nurse Resource Book announcement on KNA’s website. The new look will promote the value of the Nurse Resource Book to encourage more nurses to submit their information.
• We are collecting “fun facts” of nurses to create a mini flyer campaign that will educate and build interest in the nursing profession and Nurse Resource Book.
• We are designing electronic posters to highlight KNA and the Nurse Resource Book. The posters will be distributed to physician and nursing organizations, nursing schools, Kentucky medical sites, and a variety of other medical-based organizations.
• We are creating short video clips to distribute to various public service spots and social media sites.
• We will create marketing resources for KNA to use in future marketing campaigns for annual updates to its Resource Book.
• We have gathered and are compiling helpful hints for KNA to maintain the Resource Book as the project moves forward into new years and editions.

In summary, all of the members of our KNA-HEN Fellows Team are very passionate about the role of nurses in our health care system, and we recognize the urgent need to highlight the expertise and roles of nurses throughout the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Register at the KNA web site at .

Project: Alzheimer’s Association – Marketing and Communications Plan

Project Leader: Aleah Schutze, Of Counsel, Steptoe & Johnson

The Alzheimer’s Association, Greater Kentucky and Southern Indiana Chapter (“Association”) requested help with marketing and communications.  The HEN fellows worked with the Association’s former Executive Director and its Longest Day Manager to develop four goals that we believe will have maximum impact for the Association,

First, each HEN fellow has formed and registered a team to participate in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s which will be held virtually on October 10.  The Walk to End Alzheimer’s is the Associations largest fundraiser, and the fellows will be competing against each other to hopefully take the honor of being the top fundraising team.

Second, we are working with the Association to support it with social media and marketing activities.  To that end, we have a Marketing person from Humana assisting the Association, and we are also helping it develop a marketing/social media internship position so that the Association can utilize talent from local colleges to keep up with its social media marketing and communications.

Third, we are working with the Association to create social media content and marketing materials that it can use going forward.  We are still working with the Association regarding exactly what the deliverables will be, but we expect items such as a marketing plan, template letters and a social media schedule and content.

Finally, we are soliciting local businesses to sponsor the Walk to End Alzheimer’s.  So far, Marisa Tichenor was able to get Humana to sponsor the Walk and Aaron McKinney has indicted that L & D Mail Masters will provide promotional materials, printing, signs, mailings, etc. in support of the Walk.

More information can be found at the Walk to End Alzheimer’s web site at .

Project: Team AARP

Project Leader:  Craig Long, Chief Growth Officer, SentryHealth

Team AARP is examining the Longevity Economy, specifically those 50 years and older and the impact they make in economic contribution.  Four key areas have been identified: 1) employment, 2) volunteering, 3) caregiving, and 4) charitable donations.  The hypothesis to be evaluated is the impact COVID19 has had on the overall 50 years and older overall population, and if supported by survey response data, by each of the four segments.

We have leveraged the research resources within AARP to support the data gathering process, including survey design and survey field distribution via a telephonic survey.  We are in the process of finalizing a survey instrument that will be delivered to those Jefferson County individuals that are 50 years and older.  The survey tool will contain a few specific demographic questions that will enable AARP to look at other data analysis for the respondents.  The balance of the questions will be specific to the hypothesis that we identified above.  At a high level, the telephonic survey will take approximately 15 minutes to respond.  Our goal is to have 800 completed responses that will yield a statistically relevant sample of this segment of Jefferson County residents.  Based on the timing required for the field period we anticipate all of the surveys to be completed by the end of August.

The September update will highlight the survey process, response rates achieved and initial observations from the data gathering phase during August.