Maintaining Public Confidence in the National Health Service During a Global Health Crisis
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May 20, 2024
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As infection rates rose through the first COVID-19 wave in 2020 and the more pronounced winter crisis at the start of 2021, NHS England sought additional strategic communications support from FTI Consulting. Our team helped to address unprecedented volumes of media requests within an established organisational risk process to enable access to hospital sites during the peak of the pandemic — with the objective of conveying the importance of adhering to public health guidelines while upholding confidence in the institution of NHS England.
Our Impact
- Broadcast access to hospital intensive care units and recovery wards enabled first-hand testimony to convey accurate details of the COVID-19 health crisis to the general public and the importance of adhering to public health guidelines.
- While the NHS was a front-page story for national papers and a lead story on evening news channels for 14 consecutive days, the information contained was accurate and evidence-based — avoiding a further crisis from misinformation.
- Effective and strategic communications efforts helped convey the impacts of COVID-19 on the national healthcare system to the general public.
Our Role
- FTI Consulting experts worked pro-bono alongside NHS England to meet the high volume of stakeholder communications needs during the public health crisis.
- The all-volunteer team provided surge internal and external communications support through the first UK coronavirus lockdown and established a remote press-office function for the more pronounced winter crisis at the start of 2021. The team facilitated broadcast network, press photography and reporter access requests for ICUs, recovery wards and vaccination centers.
- NHS England’s comms team were initially connected to FTI Consulting’s Strategic Communications segment through a corporate client with a UK-based employee facing media attention after being labeled as the United Kingdom’s first COVID-19 “super-spreader” at the start of the pandemic. The FTI Consulting team returned to provide pro-bono support to NHS England over three separate periods of high-volume activity with resource capacity constraints through 2020-2022.
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Published
May 20, 2024
Key Contacts
Senior Managing Director