Building a communications strategy for child health research

Child Health Outcomes Research at Leeds (CHORAL) is a research programme connecting research and clinical teams across the University of Leeds, Leeds Children’s Hospital and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. The programme is developing the infrastructure needed across Leeds to coordinate and facilitate health research that makes a measurable difference to the lives of children and young people.

Eighteen months after launch, CHORAL had established strong governance but needed a cohesive communications strategy to guide its next phase - clarifying its purpose, engaging diverse audiences and aligning communications with its five-year goals and future ambitions.

The brief

Campus was asked to bring clarity and direction to CHORAL’s messaging and engagement across its multidisciplinary research groups (MRGs) and institutional partners.

CHORAL sought support to:

• Audit and assess existing communications and materials.

• Identify and prioritise key audiences.

• Define programme-wide key messages.

• Align communications with strategic objectives.

• Develop a practical, resource-appropriate delivery plan.

Our approach

A mixed-method research phase combined:

• A senior stakeholder workshop to refine objectives, messages and audiences.

• Semi-structured interviews to validate findings and test perceptions.

• Review of analytics, communications outputs and ways of working.