MASHSMD Healthcare Excellence Awards2026 MASHSMD Award WinnersThis year's honorees represented the full breadth of healthcare marketing and communications — from public health campaigns tackling stigma to physician recruitment reimagined as a lifestyle story. Across five categories, their work demonstrated creativity, strategic clarity, and results that moved the needle. Platinum: Best Overall Aloysius Butler & Clark – Way of Life for Appalachian Regional HealthcareThe 2026 Platinum Award for Best Overall goes to Aloysius Butler & Clark for its Way of Life campaign on behalf of Appalachian Regional Healthcare (ARH). Facing a physician recruitment crisis driven by geographic bias, ARH needed to do more than post a job listing. AB&C reframed the question entirely — instead of selling compensation or credentials, the campaign sold a life. Immersive visuals and messaging repositioned Appalachia as a place of balance, natural beauty, and personal fulfillment, challenging the assumptions urban physicians carry about rural practice. The results were striking: a 176% increase in new users, 125% growth in applications, and a 387% rise in organic search volume, with engagement continuing well after the campaign period ended.
Gold, Advertising Campaign Aloysius Butler & Clark – Way of Life for Appalachian Regional Healthcare The same campaign earned Gold in the Advertising category, recognized for its strategic use of immersive visuals and targeted messaging to reach physicians in major metro markets. By leading with lifestyle over logistics, the campaign broke through where traditional recruitment advertising falls flat. Gold, Content Creation and Management Message Lab Media – MacroScope for WellSpan Health When WellSpan Health needed a fresh approach to physician referral marketing, it partnered with Message Lab Media to create MacroScope — a print newspaper for doctors that feeds a larger digital strategy. At a time when physician inboxes are overwhelmed with digital noise, MacroScope stood out by going analog. Conversational articles and lighthearted crossword puzzles gave physicians a reason to engage, while anchoring a broader digital campaign that drove measurable new referrals. The result is a compelling case for how print can have a renaissance — and how creative thinking about the audience can unlock new channels.
Gold, Branding, Design, and Visuals Devaney & Associates – Carroll Hospital "Planting Positivity" Annual Report Carroll Hospital, a LifeBridge Health Center, came to Devaney & Associates with a familiar challenge: how to refresh a donor communication without alienating longtime supporters while reaching a younger generation. The answer was Planting Positivity — a campaign that framed contributions as seeds for future community growth. The annual report paired human-centered storytelling with tangible, tactile creative tools: plantable seed cards and custom-patterned thank-you notes that unified the message across generations and donor touchpoints. What began as a standard report became a comprehensive engagement campaign that exceeded expectations on every measure.
Gold, Innovative and Emerging Strategies Causeway Solutions – The Confused Campaign for UPMC UPMC and Causeway Solutions identified a belief-based access barrier that was quietly undermining service-line marketing: many potential patients incorrectly assumed UPMC was out of network for their insurance, and no amount of activation-focused advertising could overcome that misperception. Their solution was disciplined sequencing. The two-phase campaign delivered unique educational content first — clarifying network status — before moving to traditional conversion messaging. Using a rigorous randomized test-and-control design across digital, connected TV, and direct mail, the campaign achieved a 7.5% lift in completed visits for the test group relative to control. The results validated an "Educate then Activate" model that has implications well beyond this single campaign.
Gold, Public Relations and Communications Aloysius Butler & Clark – The Renfrew Center Year-Long Media Relations AB&C spent a full year building earned media momentum for The Renfrew Center, a national leader in eating disorder treatment. The strategy combined proactive, custom pitching with reactive media engagement — leveraging expert spokespeople, alumni stories, and timely hooks including GLP-1 medications, social media trends, and ARFID. The campaign secured 94 placements generating 1.9 billion impressions and $29.5 million in advertising value, with coverage spanning health, niche audiences, observances, and business positioning. Beyond the numbers, the campaign strengthened Renfrew's authority as the go-to source on eating disorder topics — a foundation that continued producing results into 2026.
Complete List of Winners of the 2026 MASHSMD Marketing Excellence Awards Advertising Campaign
Content Creation and Management
Branding, Design, and Visuals
Innovative and Emerging Strategies
Public Relations and Communications
Platinum: Best Overall
Congratulations to all of our 2026 winners. Thank you for raising the standard for healthcare marketing and communications across our region.
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