The Healthcare Communications Association (HCA) first published guidance relating to evaluation in communication activities, at that time predominantly from a public relations perspective, over 20 years ago. While the world and our industry has significantly changed, the importance of this topic remains, as do the challenges and barriers to implementation.
In 2023, the HCA’s Standards and Best Practice Committee has been considering the sector’s use of evaluation in communication activities, aiming to:
- Help communicators better understand the importance and value of measurement and evaluation
- Share and provide guidance about how to overcome barriers to incorporating evaluation in their programmes
- Signpost to other resources on measurement and evaluation already available from other organisations.
Taken together, it is hoped this will help encourage more communicators to incorporate measurement and evaluation into their programmes.
To gain insight into the challenges, perspectives and opportunities, a series of qualitative interviews were undertaken with 14 senior leaders representing a cross-section of healthcare communications disciplines – including advertising, medical education (MedEd), medical affairs (MA) and public relations (PR) – in agency and industry roles. Despite some degree of variance from respondents, often based on their specialisation, there were many consistent insights that were identified from the research. These should inform all practitioners about where we all need to focus efforts to improve evaluation of our communications initiatives, to demonstrate value and further elevate the role of communications within the commercial, medical affairs and charity settings.
The disconnect between perceived importance and actual implementation
There was strong consensus that evaluation was an important component of any communications programme. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 represented greatest importance, all responses were above 8. Yet despite this, the consistency of incorporating evaluation criteria in their organisation’s communications activity was much more varied and all significantly less than ubiquitous. This variation also existed within individual organisations – across teams and geographies – suggesting that often no universally implemented strategy for ensuring evaluation existed, or was being followed. For agencies who felt they had a strong philosophy of evaluation, they suggested their clients often did not share the same commitment, meaning evaluation was often the first thing to be scaled down or removed.
“I do find measurement in the same vein as project management. Measurement is the first thing to be scaled down considerably or sometimes asked to be removed.” Research agency interviewee
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