MHP Partners With Medical Journalists' Association To“Help Healthcare Reporters Dig Deeper”

(MENAFN- PRovoke) LONDON - MHP Group has forged an exclusive partnership with the Medical Journalists' Association (MJA), to deliver healthcare briefings to its Network of 450 health, medical and science journalists.

The collaboration will provide MJA members with access to media briefings with some of the world's largest pharmaceutical, healthcare, life sciences and research organisations, exploring the latest developments in healthcare and life sciences, as well as an annual lecture series.

MHP health communications director Jaber Mohamed will lead the partnership, which will be overseen by MHP's team of former journalists. It will also be governed by a formal code of conduct to ensure transparency, accuracy and editorial integrity.

The MJA and its members will retain full editorial independence and will not be constrained on questions they can pose to media briefing panels. The association has more than 450 members, including writers, broadcasters and editors from outlets such as the BBC, British Medical Journal, Nature and the Financial Times.

Mohamed (pictured, left) told PRovoke Media that the initiative would create a major new platform for health and life-science leaders to address the UK sector's biggest media influencers:“Journalists are increasingly time poor, and it's hard for them to filter through what stories mean and what the science is behind it. There is a move to not take press releases at face value but to dig deeper.

“From a health PR agency perspective, one of the lasting impacts of Covid is that readers and audiences are more science-literate than they used to be, and as a consequence health and science journalists are writing for a more informed audience. It's a good thing for us as we can tell more complex science stories to an audience more willing to read them, but on the other hand, it puts the onus on us to make sure what we're selling passes the sniff test. This partnership is our way of engaging more meaningfully with journalists to give them that depth of information.”

He also said that the partnership would help the public, health professionals and policy makers receive accurate and essential information at a time when misinformation is proliferating:“For us, the first line of defence against health misinformation is making sure the media get it right from the off.

“People take stories from reputable media and disseminate them across social media –we in the PR industry are trying to ensure that the story is correct, well-sourced, researched and understood. This partnership means we can connect journalists to the people behind the stories, so it's not just PR people briefing them but connecting them directly with clinicians, key opinion leaders and business leaders.”

The two partners have already hosted two briefings, including inviting UK health secretary Wes Streeting to speak to national health and science journalists and senior people from the likes of GSK, AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk.“The response has been good,” said Mohamed,“there's a real appetite from journalists to hear what we have to say.”

Medical Journalists' Association chair Shaun Lintern (pictured, right), who is also health editor of the Sunday Times, said:“Journalists are increasingly time poor, so connecting them directly with experts is a real benefit. This partnership will give MJA members special access to news briefings from industry experts, where they can ask questions and get a deeper understanding of stories straight from the source.

“This collaboration also means we can expand our events, including a new annual lecture to build on the success of our Wes Streeting event held earlier this year.”

MHP Group recently bought technology agency Tuva Partners , after buying creative content agency Studio La Plage in March – its first two acquisitions since MHP was bought by Next Fifteen in 2022.

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