Every day countless resilience stories play out across the Mount Sinai Health System. Whether it’s a patient in recovery or a researcher working towards a cure, resilience unites our community across eight hospitals, a leading medical school and a vast network of ambulatory practices. Our “Road to Resilience” podcast grew out of a desire to support patients, their families, and the public by providing inspiring stories and science-backed insights that listeners can use to overcome adversity. We kicked off the podcast in mid-2018 with episodes featuring Dennis Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and President for Academic Affairs at the Mount Sinai Health System. Dr. Charney is a leading expert on resilience, the co-author of Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges, and a survivor of gun violence. Since then we’ve featured a diverse array of athletes, entertainers, authors, patients, physicians, researchers and others across 25+ episodes.
Our goals have been to:
Celebrate resilient people in our community.
Inspire and inform listeners across the country.
Enhance positive feelings toward the Mount Sinai Health System and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Heighten our reputation for cutting-edge scientific research and care.
Create a platform for talking about trauma, end of life, chronic illness and other important but difficult-to-discuss topics.
Show strategy
Because “resilience” is fundamental to Mount Sinai’s work and a topic of public interest right now, we recognized that a resilience podcast could both boost our brand and satisfy listener demand. We quickly settled on an interview format, which would be relatively easy to produce and provide the time and space for deep conversations. We also realized that our competitive advantage in a crowded marketplace is our access to world-renowned experts who can speak to the science of resilience. Some of our most successful episodes, including “The Long Arm of Childhood Trauma,” with comedian Darrell Hammond, have involved patients and experts exploring topics side-by-side. Lastly, because resilience is such a broad topic, we’ve worked to keep things fresh by looking for resilience in diverse places. We did one episode (“The Story of Bed 25”) about the resilience of an asylum-seeker, and another on how the brain encodes fear memories (“Your Brain on Fear.") All episodes appear on our website, where they’re accompanied by full transcripts, helpful links, and engaging images.
Audience Development Strategy
Our audience development strategy was designed, first and foremost, to leverage the size of the Mount Sinai Health System, which employs 42,000+ people and treats millions of patients every year. To engage visitors, we produce 1-2 minute episode-promo videos that appear on TV screens throughout the health system. We have also arranged for links to the podcast to appear on iPads in patient rooms. When Mount Sinai physicians appear on the podcast, we often produce promotional episode-specific postcards for them to keep at their offices and take to medical conferences. To raise awareness among Mount Sinai staff, we frequently appear on internal newsletters and email blasts. As for external audiences, we’ve produced a range of content for social media. “Audiograms”—short audio clips accompanied by subtitles and a moving waveform—have been especially effective on social media. We’ve also produced Instagram stories and static content. Paid marketing and two social media campaigns have also helped boost our listenership, as have targeted emails to healthcare professionals.
The results have been outstanding:
180,000+ downloads across 27 episodes
5-star rating on Apple Podcasts
Topped Apple Podcast U.S. Charts: #4 Medicine Podcast
89% of online survey respondents said they learned something new from the podcast and felt inspired after listening
Gold Winner, AVA Digital Awards 2020
Numerous positive emails, social posts, and reviews like these:
“Inspiring and real. A must listen to everyone and anyone. So many of these conversations and stories are so important.” -valerieg178
“I’ve found this podcast moving, insightful and inspiring. … Great resource for all types of healthcare and other service providers.” -GC from AZ
“It was nice to feel inspired. I listened to this during my lunch and felt energized going into my afternoon. Keep up the great work !” - Nurse at Mount Sinai
