Bulldog Awards Honors Amendola Communications for Appriss Health OpenBeds Media Campaign

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—June 3, 2021 – Amendola Communications today announced it has won a Bulldog PR Award in the Best Healthcare Campaign category, further enhancing the company’s reputation as a top, innovative public relations (PR) and marketing communications agency for healthcare and health IT.

Bulldog Awards, the only PR awards program judged exclusively by journalists, honored Amendola with a 2021 PR Silver Award for a media campaign designed to raise the profile of Appriss Health through coverage of OpenBeds, an Appriss subsidiary that offers a comprehensive behavioral health capacity management and referral technology solution to help create trusted treatment networks that improve support and care delivery to patients in need.

“We are elated to be recognized for the creativity and energy our team put into this campaign, especially in a year with a record number of entries,” said agency CEO, Jodi Amendola. “Given how COVID-19 dominated healthcare news in 2020, raising the profile of a client focused on substance abuse solutions was a challenge. But our team did a superb job of telling the inspiring story of OpenBeds and, in the process, building awareness of Appriss Health as a public health partner for states to address substance abuse and behavioral health needs.”

Amendola’s strategy leveraged Appriss Health Senior Vice President and OpenBeds Co-founder Nishi Rawat, MD, whose experience as a critical care physician unable to connect patients with needed behavioral healthcare inspired her to start OpenBeds in 2015 with her father, a systems engineer. Dr. Rawat’s compelling story and the work done by OpenBeds would fill a growing need among healthcare journalists for compelling COVID stories.

The plan called for outreach to local media as well as to national health and trade media, with a focus on reporters and publications covering issues related to the opioid crisis and mental health. In addition to more traditional article coverage, the campaign aimed to tell a broader story of growing state efforts and proposing data-based story ideas.

Amendola also pursued a thought leadership strategy, creating bylined content for Appriss Health leadership. These included an op-ed on the need for action to address the opioid crisis amid the COVID-19 pandemic for its president that ran in Appriss Health’s hometown newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, a commentary by Dr. Rawat on the need for increased access to medication-assisted treatment published on KevinMD, and a piece calling for expanded naloxone availability by Appriss Health’s pharmacy leader.

The Amendola campaign for Appriss Health generated overwhelmingly positive media exposure. Sentiment analysis by Meltwater shows that 87.1% of media coverage of the company was positive (with 0% negative coverage), while OpenBeds garnered 91.49% positive coverage and no negative coverage.

Amendola secured 27 media placements for Appriss Health in 2020, along with 18 for OpenBeds and 10 for Appriss. Total media coverage of Appriss Health last year reached a potential 8.52 million readers. The vast majority of those potential readers (6.03 million) were earned in the fourth quarter as the campaign began to show results.

The Bulldog Awards are run by Bulldog Reporter, the publishing arm of Agility PR Solutions, a provider of media database, monitoring, and PR measurement solutions designed to simplify the communications lifecycle. These annual awards celebrate excellence in public relations and communications. Any professionals involved in public relations, communications, marketing, social media, branding, product management, sales and investor relations are eligible.

About Amendola

Amendola is an award-winning, insights-driven public relations and marketing firm that integrates media relations, social media, content and lead-gen programs to move healthcare, life sciences/pharma and healthcare IT decision-makers to action. The agency represents some of the industry’s best-known brands, as well as groundbreaking startups that are disrupting the status quo. Nearly 90% of its client base represents multi-year clients and/or repeat client executives. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros understand the ongoing complexities of the healthcare ecosystem and provide strategic guidance and creative direction to drive positive ROI, boost reputation and increase market share. Making an impact since 2003, Amendola combines traditional and digital media to fuel meaningful and measurable growth. For more information about the industry’s “A-Team,” visit www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Media Contact:    
Marcia G. Rhodes, Amendola Communications, 480.664.8412 ext. 15, mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com