Renee A. Prejean-Motanky is a writer and strategic marketing and communications management professional and consultant. Contact her directly at RAPWrites@aol.com.

Advice and Perspective

(Published December, 2003)

The early enlightenment thinkers assumed that they had answered the question of the proper role of the intellectual in politics and economy. Although the social sciences were still in the process of developing, they would ultimately yield the universal laws needed to guide the evolution of humankind toward improved modes of existence…social science, just as physical science, would reveal the inner secrets of the social world for the betterment of all. (Comte 1822; Saint-Simon 1822)

By Renée A. Prejean-Motanky

Naiveté? Perhaps, but such thought process ear-marked the beginnings of what we know today as Public Affairs!

According to the Public Affairs Council, there are five reasons why public affairs is more important than ever:

1. Public Distrust is growing.

2. Brands are valuable, but fragile.

3. Big Government is here to stay. At all levels, the government’s involvement in business is increasing, not decreasing.

4. Life is not fair. Terrorism, trade wars, government deficits, frivolous lawsuits—all of these eternal challenges can have a big impact on a corporation or association.

5. You can’t go it alone. Every organization is tied to the communities it serves and governments that regulate its activities.

The most important thing to remember when it comes to public affairs is that unless you can target the appropriate committees, CEO’s and representatives directly, the changes you require may be overlooked.

I recently spoke with Don Rashid, Director of Public Affairs at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County who weighed in regarding how public affairs fits in today’s marketing mix:

The role of public affairs professional is multi-faceted in that we have to be well versed in journalism, the governmental & political landscape of the organization whose public affairs we oversee as well as sociological influences). The public affairs officer must make sure that all of these things take place in the right political environment. Public Affairs directors are more often involved with external publics and not with employees or share-holders.

As the aspect of Public Relations that involves working with governments and groups with regard to societal or public policy action and legislation. It is the relationship between an organization and the government or political entities, in general.

I think that Public Relations is a component of Public Affairs. Public Affairs sometimes is used as a synonym for Public Relations, but more often the term refers to activities that are thought to be in the public interest.

A Public Affairs professional’s task is to influence government or organizational change(s) that, theoretically, are good for the masses while Public Relations speaks to targeted groups and individuals to educate or gain acceptance of an idea or product. In a nutshell, Public Affairs speaks to institutions and/or organizations and seeks to affect social change. Public Relations seeks to promote or publicize a specific product or an idea to a targeted audience(s), usually a potential consumer of the product, service or idea being publicized.

So would you say that the key difference is that Public Affairs affects organizational or Institutional change while public affairs affects individual Change?

Yes and that Public Affairs operates at a much higher level within the organizational structure.

Public Affairs has various publics as does Public Relations….Public Affairs professionals work to speak to some of the same audiences, but in addition must ensure that their voice is heard by government and in the best possible political climate.

I interact with a number of entities ranging from government, to media, as well as internal (providers within the hospital) and external audiences on a variety of issues. My office often functions on a day-to-day basis in much the same way that a typical public relations office might.

Public Affairs at Stroger Hospital is a broad umbrella (one item in the overall marketing arsenal, if you will) for a number of responsibilities. On the Public Affairs side we concern ourselves with the more global reach that we’ve been focusing on here and on the Public Relations side we focus on reaching individual publics (doctors, patients, etc.). We are actually concerned with two key audiences; "constituents" and "government".

Stroger Hospital is a public entity. We’re a component of County Government. Our ongoing relationship with the Cook County Board of Commissioners, who are county legislators, is our primary audience. The hospital must win their approval whether on broad health care issues that require funding, or to vote on legislative issues that affect our ability to do what we do. We are also regulated by the Illinois Department of Public Health, which is our lifeblood. We have to deal with a broad variety of regulatory issues in order to "stay in business". On that level we have to not only demonstrate our worthiness and our ability to deliver health care to the people of cook county, we must also at times go to them with issues that affect our ability to provide service. There are numerous other governmental and regulatory agencies that we must deal with. There are so many issues emerging and overlapping that it takes a well-tuned, researched and informed organization to address these issues. That’s the task of Public Affairs.

As a public hospital whose primary focus is to serve indigent populations in Cook County, many of our clients don’t take advantage of the numerous services that we offer with respect to preventive health care. Our service population is diverse, as is our staff, and our challenge is to communicate to both of these audiences effectively (and in the correct language).

I think it is tied to the development of technology. Particularly in health care because as advances are made in technology, we are expected to be on the cutting edge if not, in fact, ahead of the trends in order to communicate these developments to our constituents. We will have to (in the words of Douglas G. Pinkham, President of the Public Affairs Council) become forecasters.

Human nature being what it is; we always have to monitor and gauge how service is being rendered and to ensure that the perceptions of both employees and patients of that service are similar. We must educate employees to ensure that their attitudes are consistent with our mission to provide a comprehensive program of quality health care with dignity and respect to the people of Cook County regardless of their ability to pay. Consistent with that is the emphasis of Public Affairs to provide information, training and gauge best practices.

(Renee A. Prejean-Motanky is a writer and strategic marketing and communications management professional. She currently works as a consultant in the Chicago area. You can contact her directly at RAPWrites@aol.com.)

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