CareQuest Institute for Oral Health® is a national nonprofit championing a more equitable future where every person can reach their full potential through excellent health. We do this through our work in grantmaking, research, health improvement, education, and policy and advocacy, as well as our leadership in dental benefits and innovation advancements. We collaborate with thought leaders, health care providers, patients, and local, state, and federal stakeholders, to accelerate oral health care transformation and create a system designed for everyone.
The goal of the CareQuest Institute Impact Report was to showcase our organization’s activities in 2022 to external and internal audiences. We sought to highlight the impact that the Institute is making in the oral health community and in the lives of patients. And finally, we wanted to energize CareQuest Institute employees and foster a sense of pride in our mission-driven work.
The theme of the CareQuest Institute Impact Report 2022 was Sparking Change in Oral Health. We selected that theme because we are a relatively new organization (launched in March 2021) and we are already making significant progress on our mission to improve the oral health of all. For example, we are advocating for expanded adult dental benefits in Medicaid, partnering with and supporting dozens of organizations that are advancing health equity in their local communities, and educating thousands of oral health providers with our programs. The theme also serves our goal of igniting excitement within our internal team, for the work they do every day.
The team at CareQuest Institute began working on the Impact Report project in August of 2022. From the outset, our goal was to showcase how our organization is improving the oral health system and the lives of patients. We wanted to showcase stories and voices, highlighting the individuals and work behind the accomplishments that are creating a more accessible, equitable, and integrated health system.
Strategically, we wanted to create a compelling, interactive, multimedia microsite that would provide readers with multiple entry points into our work. We developed the site with the strong partnership of Wire Media in Marina del Rey, California. We focused on finding rich, authentic imagery, compelling narratives, and engaging videos that provided the right mix of education and entertainment. Our organization operates as five different Activation Areas—grantmaking, research, health improvement, education, and policy and advocacy—that work in concert to improve the oral health of all. Our Impact Report team worked closely with each Area to determine the best material and the best way to share their work. It was challenging to land on just one story and three statistics, but this project helped us identify what mattered most to our audience.
Once we found the right stories for each area, we interviewed the sources, crafted the narratives, and identified visual and video supplements. We collaborated with Wire Media to develop a look for the site that supported the theme of “Sparking Change.” Our first attempt had too much text for our leadership team, who wanted something “easier to view at a glance.” We went back to our content, edited to get to the essence of the stories, and added interactive elements and visuals to bring each section to life. After countless revisions, we finished a project that we were proud to share with our audiences.
Our primary audience was those who have the capacity to create change in the oral health industry, including oral health thought leaders & policy influencers, advocates, industry innovators, providers, payors, and government entities. Our goal was to get at least 3,000 views of the microsite.
To promote the website, we developed a two-tiered approach. We promoted it via our owned channels for the first month and then via paid advertising. The owned channels we used were designed to get our Board and employees to share the Impact Report on their social media platforms. Other owned-channel efforts included posting the report on our intranet, in our internal newsletter, in our external newsletter, in a dedicated email, and on our social media channels. To personalize the promotion, we developed special posts about the specific Activation Area’s accomplishments so employees from those Areas would be excited to share them.
We then promoted the site via digital advertising for one month with a modest budget of $5,000. We developed motion ads to capture the audience’s attention (still images of these ads are included). This paid advertising was highly targeted to our specific audiences and optimized for the most responsive audiences.
The CareQuest Institute Impact Report 2022 microsite received more than 12,000 page views, four times the goal 3,000 we had set for ourselves. The views—and the project—provided a significant lift in our overall brand awareness among industry leaders. Posts about the Impact Report received 157,000 views on social media channels. Digital ads received more than 127,000 views and 14,000 clicks. Additionally, we garnered more than 2,100 views of the website from organic traffic before we launched the digital advertising program.
We consider these better-than-expected numbers to be a reflection on the quality of the product and the growing reach our organization has in the industry. As importantly, our internal team was excited and proud to share the report and the showcase accomplishments they helped to achieve. Overall, we considered the project and the results to be very successful.
