Academic Network Educational Panel Session at  ADA’s Annual Conference

As food safety comes under the national spotlight, so do recalls of food products. How does a dietitian communicate recall solutions and education to the consumer? Food safety experts and key industry speakers from regulatory, recall, retrieval and crisis management will be on hand to discuss new federal regulations and communications techniques that result in better, faster flow of accurate information.

• Impact of Food Recalls on the Dietitian’s Role
• Monday, November 8, 2010 from 3:30-5:00pm
• Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, Room 258 ABC

For the dietitian, and the American consumer at large, keeping abreast of food safety trends and regulations has become a case of information overload. We have access to more information about a food supply that is more highly regulated than ever. The challenge lies in efficient interpretation and channeling of this information, especially when a food-related recall strikes. How does the dietitian get it right?

Academic Network, a Stericycle company, is assembling a panel of industry experts to discuss The Impact of Food Recalls on the Dietitian’s Role at the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (#FNCE) on November 8^th in Boston, MA.  In doing so, Academic Network joins a crowd of over 10,000 dietitians and food industry leaders participating in this annual landmark event.

Food regulatory and nutrition communications leaders Gale Prince and Ilene Smith, RD, compose this education session panel at FNCE, to explore how dietitians can best access, understand, and convey recall-related information. The session is moderated by Presiding Officer Edith Howard Hogan, RD, a Medallion Award winner and former ADA media spokesperson.

Mr. Prince, founder of Your Food Safety Coach, LLC and an industry veteran of food safety and quality control issues, traces developments in food regulation and legislation. He examines the relationship of federal agencies in tracking and regulating the US food supply, providing an overview of the recall classification process. Ilene Smith, Executive Vice President and Director of Food & Nutrition at Porter Novelli, reviews best practices for navigating food safety communications. Ms. Smith highlights new media tools that empower the RD to act as a primary source of accurate information in a recall situation.

We invite you to join us on November 8, from 3:30-5:00pm, in Room 258 ABC at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

About FNCE

Each fall, the American Dietetic Association sponsors the world’s largest meeting of food and nutrition experts - more than 10,000 registered dietitians, nutrition science researchers, policy makers, health-care providers and industry leaders attend the annual meeting - and address key issues affecting the health of all Americans. The annual Food & Nutrition Conference & Expo (FNCE) features more than 100 research and educational presentations, lectures, debates, panel discussions and culinary demonstrations. More than 400 exhibitors from corporations, government and nonprofit agencies showcase new consumer food products and nutrition education materials.

Sharing Health Expertise at Drug Information Association’s 46th Annual Meeting

Join us at the Drug Information Association’s 46th Annual Meeting (#DIA2010) in Washington, DC on June 13-17.

Health experts from Academic Network will be on hand to discuss our expansive portfolio which includes expert pharmacovigilance and recall/retrieval services. “DIA is among the most established trade group in the industry,” said Don Houghton, Director of Contact Center and Online Operations. “There is no better place than the annual conference to get the exposure, build the relationships, and have the kinds of conversations that happen here.”

Academic Network will attend the conference during the exhibition dates of June 14-17. Please contact Rachel Greben  503-432-4650 to arrange a meeting or informational webinar. View our press release: http://pitch.pe/67961.

A new study released this month by Battelle, the nation’s largest independent nonprofit research and development organization, traces developments in the bioscience industry on a state-by-state and national level.

Released in collaboration with the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), the Battelle/BIO State Bioscience Initiatives 2010 contains the most recent data available and shows that publicly traded bioscience-related companies on the whole generated positive net growth through 2009.

The report is a compendium of national, state and metropolitan data on bioscience employment and growth trends from 2001 to 2008, according to the latest detailed industry data to be released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It also presents a series of key bioscience performance metrics and state policy and program trends that are designed to accelerate the growth of the biosciences.

Oregon has fared well over the past decade. The report found that “The bioscience industry in Oregon has generally outpaced job growth compared with the national sector since 2001. The largest State bioscience subsector is medical devices and equipment (5,565 jobs). Academic bioscience research and development expenditures in Oregon reached $399 million in 2008, led by nearly equal amounts in the biological and medical sciences. Both academic R&D in the biosciences and funding from the National Institutes of Health are well concentrated in Oregon with per capita figures that are above average. NIH baseline funding has increased by 8.7 percent since 2004, and when the additional funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) are taken into account this growth rate reaches 30.4 percent. During the last six years, $109 million in venture capital was invested in State bioscience companies, mainly in pharmaceuticals and medical/health information technology. The 879 bioscience patents issued over the same six-year period were well diversified across fields.”

Executive Summary: http://www.bio.org/local/battelle2010/OREGON_profile.pdf

Oregon Report: http://www.bio.org/local/battelle2010/OREGON_profile.pdf

Social media tools give consumers have an increasingly active voice in monitoring product recalls. How do major brands respond in the face of a recall? This week’s article in the Washington Post considers how companies must deviate from tradition and develop new strategies to respond and communicate to social media-savvy consumers.

Morningstar, Inc., a leading provider of independent investment research, today named Mark Miller, chairman, president, and CEO of Stericycle Inc. as its 2009 CEO of the Year! Read more.

Medical Experts Enhance the Online Identity of Your Product

Your customers are talking about you online. You want to be fluent in the conversation.

Academic Network, a Stericycle company, has developed an outsourcing online management service targeted to the pharmaceutical, food and beverage industries.  The service includes both an online audit and ongoing reputation monitoring by health professionals trained in medicine, nutrition and identifying adverse events. The service is designed to offer companies an outsourcing solution at a fraction of the cost of building and maintaining an online reputation management system in-house.

Clients use Academic Network’s professional social media staff to monitor and engage with others online, thereby enhancing their brand. Academic Network has created an outsourcing model to manage the risk and provide the expertise to help companies not only launch a social media campaign but maintain their reputation online at a fraction of the cost. A successful social media campaign involves dedicated resources to effectively monitor and manage online conversations about a company’s products.  Academic Network’s health professionals provide the expertise to assure that any adverse conversations online are brought to the attention of their clients to protect the safety of their products and customers.

Many companies have started to use social media tools but have not considered the overall costs to build and maintain a successful online program. Academic Network offers an outsourcing solution that will add expertise, while reducing overall costs in equipment, software and staff. The savings incurred mirrors that of traditional call center outsourcing, and takes advantage of the shared resources that Academic Network offers.

Today’s article in the TimesOnline (London, UK) asks “Is salt really the Devil’s ingredient?” Focusing on a recent piece in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN), the article questions the growing portrayal of salt as a primary dietary culprit.  The CJASN article, coauthored by Dr. David McCarron, questions the regulation of sodium consumption through public policy, stating that science must ultimately determine the matter.

Innovative Portland-based healthcare communications company named once again one of fastest growing inner city companies in the nation

Portland, Ore. - BusinessWeek Magazine and the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) have ranked Academic Network, a Stericycle company, an innovative & award-winning medical and health communications firm 49^th on the 11th Annual Top Inner City 100 list. 2009 is the second consecutive year that Academic Network has ranked in the top 100 awardees.

The ICIC was established to recognize the fastest growing companies in America that are based in the “inner city” and provide new business growth potential to their communities. Innovative practices and sustained growth are the predominant traits of the 2009 Inner City 100 award winners. Through an annual national competition, ICIC ranks the 100 fastest-growing businesses in inner city settings. The 2009 award ceremony was held May 20^th in Boston.

Academic Network, now a company of Stericycle, Inc., focuses on healthcare communications services to a wide range of corporate and governmental clients involved in the pharmaceutical, medical device, food and beverage sectors. The firm’s expertise in consumer affairs ranges from contact center solutions for consumer affairs and clinical trial recruitment, adverse event reporting, design of disease specific websites and social media strategies directed at consumers and health professionals. These platforms provide clients with creative and tested strategies for interacting with consumers.

The founders of Academic Network, David McCarron, MD, FACP, and Kathleen A. McCarron, veteran healthcare professionals– have each worked with the pharmaceutical and food industries for over thirty years within the academic and private sector. Academic Network was established in the early 1990’s to fill the void in the telecommunications industry for services focusing solely on health-related products and issues.

“Our staff of healthcare professionals that include physicians, nurses and dieticians, our ability to staff our contact centers with healthcare professional, the enhanced adverse events monitoring and use of social media have enabled us to continue to grow our consumer affairs, patient recruitment business and provide adverse event reporting during product recalls for the protection of the consumer,” says the company’s co-founder , Kathleen A. McCarron.

“We are delighted to celebrate businesses like Academic Network that are playing a critical role to revitalize distressed urban communities throughout America,” said Michael Porter, founder and CEO of ICIC and Professor at Harvard Business School. “By creating jobs, income, and wealth for local residents, these high-growth businesses are vivid proof that the most effective way to address economic inequality in America is to equip every community to prosper in the market system. Inner City 100 companies also provide a window into the future where all companies will need to learn to address diverse customers and mobilize diverse workforces.”

2009 ICIC awardees were selected from over 5,000 nominations. Highlights:

• Inner City 100 companies are 34 percent minority-owned. Nationally, just 8 percent of companies with annual revenues over $1 million are minority-owned.
• The 2009 Inner City 100 companies are 18 percent owned by immigrants to the United States.
• 21 percent of the 2009 Inner City 100 are women-owned. Nationally, only 10 percent of companies with over $1 million in annual revenues are women-owned.
• The 2009 Inner City 100 boasts an average workforce that is 53 percent minority employees and 43 percent inner city residents.
• The 2009 Inner City 100 pay an average of over $15.00 per hour to hourly employees and $53,000 per year to salaried employees.

Academic Network provides optimal, most cost-effective means for distributing health-related product information to consumers and healthcare providers. Academic Network offers:

Contact Center Solutions: Call center, IVR, online and fulfillment
Clinical Trial Recruitment and Retention: Site support, Telecom and Online Screening
Quality and Regulatory Compliance: Adverse event reporting, recall customer care
Healthcare Operators: Medical, Nutritional, Health; Multilingual Expertise
Medical Advisory Boards: Internationally recognized experts
New Media Communications: Web 2.0, blogging, social media and online reputation monitoring expertise as well as web design and support services

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About Academic Network Academic Network, now a Stericycle Company is a leading medical and health communications company conceived by academic professionals to serve as a singular source for communicating health-related issues to consumers and health professionals. Academic Network works with leading pharmaceutical, food and beverage, and other Fortune 500 companies, as well as healthcare organizations, in developing effective communications strategies through consulting, telecommunications, internet and new media resources. Visit Academic Network at www.academicnetwork.com Please contact Claudia Johnson @Claudia Johnson.com, 503-799-2220 for more information

About the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City
The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) is a national not-for-profit organization founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter. ICIC’s mission is to promote economic prosperity in America’s inner cities through private sector engagement that leads to jobs, income and wealth creation for local residents. ICIC brings together business and civic leaders to drive innovation and action, transform thinking and accelerate inner city business growth and investment.

For more information about the 2009 Inner City 100 list, please contact Julia Ely at (617) 292-2383. The entire list can be found at www.icic.org.

A new website for The President’s Food Safety Working Group will serve as a hub for citizens and stakeholders to stay informed and provide input on national food safety.

On March 14, 2009, President Barack Obama announced the creation of the Food Safety Working Group, chaired by the Secretaries of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.

As the President said in his address, the working group “will bring together cabinet secretaries and senior officials to advise me on how we can upgrade our food safety laws for the 21st century; foster coordination throughout government; and ensure that we are not just designing laws that will keep the American people safe, but enforcing them.”

This site allow participants to learn about agencies playing a role in food safety, participate in the conversation (i.e. Twitter hashtag #WHsafefood), and find additional resources and activities.

Academic Network Leads Social Media Panel Today at SOCAP International Symposium: Social Media is Here to Stay so Companies Need to Prepare to Engage Consumers Online

April 21, 2009 (Chicago) —What if the US peanut industry - and the hordes of products and companies impacted by the recent recall — had used the power of the social media to both monitor online activity and engage consumers in discussions and build relationships? Academic Network, a Stericycle company, today led food, beverage and pharmaceutical companies in a panel discussion at SOCAP International Symposium about preparing companies and employees to engage in social media, a phenomenon that’s here to stay according to panelists.

As consumers flood online to research recent food industry recall issues, conversations are springing up all over the web. Consumers are sharing information - ideas, stories, and experiences - about food and drug recalls, diet, and healthy lifestyles. Forward-thinking companies are beginning to look not only at how their brands are reflected, but how their products are being talked about within online communities.

“Companies need to build online relationships with consumers and customers long before a recall or crisis hits,” says Janet Lee Johnson, senior online strategist, Academic Network, a Stericycle company and SOCAP panelist. “There will be more recalls in the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Companies need to anticipate by building online consumer relationships now so when the inevitable happens they can engage another channel of communications and branding — social media.”

Academic Network advises companies getting into social media for the first time to “walk don’t run” when readying for a social media initiative:

♦ Have an established social media policy for your organization - if you do nothing else

♦ Approach social media strategically - have a plan; develop with your media, marketing, pr, consumer affairs, web and online teams

♦ Be sure you have an online listening strategy and don’t be afraid of it - listen in on relevant blogs, websites, Twitter (www.twitter.com) Facebook (www.facebook.com) and more

♦ Bring bloggers and tweeters into corporate media relations outreach - more and more consumers are listening and reading online

♦ Actively engage in discussions online as part of consumer relations, communications and branding strategy

Academic Network, a Stericycle company, and award-winning medical and health communications firm, is now offering services to help clients practice safe, protected consumer engagement in the growing world of Health 2.0 — the use of social media for collaboration between patients, caregivers, medical professionals and other stakeholders. Because the trend toward Health 2.0 is growing so rapidly, Academic Network has started utilizing social media platforms to gather consumer information on new products, recruit patients for clinical trials and help clients successfully build, monitor, manage and track their online reputation as they engage with consumers online.

Follow Academic Network via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.