The Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) launched a reimagined brand and messaging push focused on pediatric well-being as leadership aims to bolster the group's role as “a trusted bipartisan voice in Washington for children’s health and children’s hospitals.”
The CHA said the rebrand retains much of its longtime advocacy focus, which includes work to support greater investment in Medicaid, pediatric workforce development and children’s mental health. At the same time, the association is placing more emphasis on children’s health as a collective and collaborative goal, one the CHA and its 200-plus member hospitals can support through cross-sector partnerships and data-driven thought leadership.
Alongside a visual overhaul across the CHA’s websites, the effort elevates three guiding principles for the organization: “that children’s health is a national priority, that children are the key to our future and that progress must be informed by data and driven by action.”
The rebrand was unveiled Tuesday but has been in the works for more than a year, CHA CEO Matthew Cook told Fierce Healthcare in an email Q&A.
“It's not in response to any particular dynamic or change, but a renewed commitment to championing health for every child,” Cook said. “The rebrand will help us be more bold in our messaging to inform decision making and put children's health first."
That said, the messaging overhaul comes at a time when the CHA’s member hospitals and other providers across the nation grapple with impending cuts to federal safety-net funding. Also difficult to ignore is the dominant role of the Make America Healthy Again movement and its heavy focus on reducing chronic disease among the nation’s children.
The CHA’s “renewed focus on children’s health” will allow the organization to maintain its advocacy of “core issues” while cementing itself as a bipartisan ally to health policymakers, Cook said.
“Everything we do is in service of children, full stop,” he said. “Lawmakers appreciate that—they know that our role is to protect the next generation, and many of them connect with this mission on a personal level.”
Here, Cook gave the example of gun violence, which is the leading cause of death among U.S. children. Advocating for safe gun storage initiatives and other gun injury prevention is a “natural” fit for the CHA’s mission and “really comes from a place of agreement” with policymakers.
“One thing we know we all agree on is that children should not die from gun injuries, so we’re working with our member hospitals and the Ad Council to bring awareness to this issue and provide solutions like community education, gun locks and other safe storage options,” he said.
Notably, gun violence was not mentioned in the White House’s “MAHA Report” or subsequent policy recommendations provided by the MAHA Commission, chaired by Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Those efforts, intended to guide federal policymaking on children’s health, criticized “overmedicalization,” “growth of the childhood vaccine schedule” and undue industry influence on professional associations among other less controversial findings like poor nutrition and limited primary care.
The CHA’s goal is to bring the pediatric-specific expertise and data-based lessons of its membership into those conversations, Cook said.
“Our advocacy is informed by learnings from our member hospitals, including extensive data and reporting resources,” he said. “CHA compiles data from children's hospitals in our Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS), making us a source for statistics and learnings related to children's health. PHIS data helps drive decision-making both in hospitals and on Capitol Hill."
When asked about how the CHA would approach advocacy in circumstances where policymakers are actively moving away from the consensus of healthcare professionals and available data, such as in the case of routine vaccination scrutiny, Cook again pointed to the association’s hope to serve as “a trusted bipartisan voice” and educational resource amid policy discussions.
"A lot of our work is education,” Cook said. “We believe that protecting children's health is a universal issue, so it's about educating lawmakers and decision-makers about how children are being impacted by what's happening in Washington, whether that's Medicaid cuts, conversations around vaccines, or funding issues around programs that train the next generation of our pediatric workforce."