For public relations practitioners anticipating a crisis is part of the job. Whether immediate, emerging, or sustained event, having a crisis plan that allows management to react quickly and without confusion is critical.
During my career, I've successfully spearheaded crisis management teams for all three types of events and learned from each experience how to create better crisis management teams and plans.
Case Study #1
Alabama Medicaid Agency's Physician Reimbursement Cuts
Case Study #2
High School Homecoming Seniors in Blackface
SITUATION: During the 2016 Alabama Legislature Regular Session, the Alabama Medicaid Agency experienced an $85 million shortfall. The Agency’s first budget cut was to physicians forcing many to shorten office hours, lay off staff, and stop taking Medicaid patients. As Medicaid is often considered insurance for the poor, indigent, or unemployed, I knew there was an education problem. Most Alabama residents did not realize how Medicaid affected them even though they did not utilize the low-income insurance program.
ROLE: Public Relations Director, Medical Association of the State of Alabama
PLAN: I developed an editorial calendar, placing editorials and booking media engagements for physicians who did not singularly care for underserved, poor populations. I showed how the first cut for the Agency’s budget may have been the easiest but not the wisest. As the Medical Association representative, I joined a coalition of physician specialty associations – the Alabama Chapter, Academy of Pediatrics, and the Alabama Academy of Family Physicians – for five large statewide press conferences the first week in August, live streaming the events to the Medical Association’s Facebook page. I filmed physicians holding “#IAmMedicaid – Fully Fund Medicaid” signs and discussing how the cut affected their patients and practices transforming them into the strongest voices on social media speaking against bad government practices and for the protection of Alabama’s citizens.
RESULTS: By September 2016, one month later, the physician cut was reversed. Alabama Medicaid reinstated physician reimbursements retroactively to the cut. Providers rehired laid-off staff members. Regular business hours resumed.
SITUATION: The Montgomery Academy opened in 1959 as the oldest, nearly all-white private school in Montgomery, Alabama. For homecoming 2003, since the school did not have a marching band, Athletic Director Anthony McCall invited a local, primarily African American school to celebrate with a performance in the home stadium. A group of MA seniors arrived with their faces covered in ashes, appearing in blackface.
ROLE: Public Relations/Publications Coordinator for The Montgomery Academy in Montgomery, Alabama
PLAN: I stopped one of the students and asked about the ash, which he said was a homecoming tradition to use ash from the previous year’s bonfire as face paint. These seniors were unaware of the addition of the primarily African American band. I informed the headmaster, and we went to The Montgomery Advertiser reporter in attendance together. The Advertiser’s photographer was gone. The black parents of the band seemed to consider it adolescent stupidity. The journalist interviewed band members, their parents, and MA parents before following with comments from me.
RESULTS: This story was the next day’s Montgomery Advertiser front page. I worked with the headmaster to develop a seminar on the history of blackface as a racist caricature of African descent. The headmaster agreed to work on a crisis communications plan, which the school did not have even though the campus was split into two locations and had an open air floorplan. It has been almost 20 years, and the former “tradition” has not been repeated.