Herman Baumann, Principal, Green Line Strategies, LLC, has extensive experience helping associations generate non-dues revenue, and has first-hand experience balancing the needs of members and funders. He is an acknowledged expert in sponsorship and advertising, newsletters and magazines, Internet strategies, executive education, and large-scale health promotion and disease prevention programs. In addition to more than a decade working for associations, Baumann has worked extensively in the health care and publishing fields.
Throughout his career Baumann has been an innovator, and has developed numerous new products, programs and services. His career accomplishments were recently recognized by his alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which honored him with a Distinguished Service Award. (Click for more information: http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/alumni/dsa/baumann_h.html.)
Sponsorship and advertising
Mr. Baumann has rich and deep experience both as a sponsor and a rights holder (sponsee).
He started the first sponsorship department for the Health Research and Educational Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association in Chicago, and took the organization from zero to more than $1 million in sponsorship revenue in one year. He then started AHA’s first sponsorship department, and helped AHA and its 15 affiliated organizations develop their own sponsorship functions. He grew annual combined sponsorship revenue for AHA and its affiliates to more than $6 million within two years, and worked with AHA’s Health Forum publications to bundle sponsorship and advertising sales to better support the objectives of their funders. He also developed the sponsorship structure for AHA’s year-long Centennial Celebration and sold $1.2 million in sponsorships in support of its activities.
As editor and managing editor of Chicago Suburban Times Newspapers for 10 years, he used community-based sponsorships to build brand equity and double circulation of the three original newspapers in the chain, and to start seven new newspapers. He also helped develop new advertising strategies for CSTN that enabled it to significantly increase revenue in a mature market.
While at Childrens Memorial Hospital, the pediatric teaching facility of the Northwestern University Medical School, Mr. Baumann used sponsorship strategies to increase physician participation four-fold in CMH’s continuing medical education programs. He also led development of Childrens' current logo, a child's hand embedded in clay, as well as its first radio and TV advertising campaigns.
At VHA Inc., the nation’s largest hospital group purchasing organization, Mr. Baumann used sponsorship strategies to develop national health promotion and disease prevention programs, including the first national cholesterol screening, the nation’s largest hepatitis B and pneumococcal pneumonia immunization programs, and programs that addressed obesity, smoking and other health issues.
Internet strategies
Mr. Baumann led the development of HospitalConnect, the health leadership portal, for the AHA (www.hospitalconnect.com) and its related organizations. Developed with a novel business model and technical architecture, it enabled 22 organizations and thier 50+ Web sites to share the economies of scale of a full-featured hardware and software platform while giving them full independence over their content, look, feel, member data tables, and e-commerce. Referred to a "Web site condominium," HospitalConnect's shared content management system and shared taxonomy enables Web sites within the Portal to quickly share content, and its dedicated search engine made it faster and easier for member/users to find content across sites. A single sign-on feature gives members the ability to access all sites within the Portal to which they belong or subscribe.
Sponsorship strategies helped Mr. Baumann and AHA fund the Portal's development, and the online store and online advertising network provided a steady revenue stream. The Portal offers a full set of features for associations: online meeting registration, online dues renewal, secure e-elections, online surveys, chat rooms, advertising enablement, etc. Today, the “Web site condominium” houses more than 50 Web sites, and has several major awards to its credit.
National health promotion and disease prevention
Mr. Baumann has used sponsorship strategies to develop unique health promotion and disease prevention programs while leading the Stay Healthy USA initiative at VHA Inc. His programs include:
CountDownUSA, which screened people for cholesterol and other heart health risk factors and educated physicians and the public about the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) new cholesterol standards. The nation’s largest one-day health event, Countdown USA screened millions of individuals at local events at 800+ VHA hospitals. The initiative’s accomplishments include:
- Screening more than four million individuals for three consecutive years,
- Building the nation’s largest database of individual cholesterol levels,
- Validating the efficacy of the then-new portable cholesterol analyzers compared with traditional laboratory results, and
- Reaching more than 100 million Americans and 100,000 physicians with educational messages related to cholesterol.
HBV-Free, was the nation’s largest hepatitis B immunization program. It provided tools that enabled VHA hospitals to educate their physicians, nurses, allied health professionals -- and patients -- about the need for immunization against HBV. At the time, HBV immunization was not a OSHA requirement, and nurses and physicians were reluctant to seek immunization for variety of reasons, including the risk of contracting HBV from the previous-generation vaccine. The accomplishments of the immunization campaign include:
- Immunizing more than 160,000 hospital professionals in the first three months of the program,
- Reaching more than one million hospital-affiliated staff and physicians with educational messages related to immunization, and
- Being a catalyst for the general acceptance of the then-new and safer recombinant vaccine technology.
Put Prevention Into Practice, a public-private effort between VHA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that resulted in a set of much-respected education tools for primary care physicians to use with their patients. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, MD listed this effort as one of the “top 10 accomplishments” of his administration.
Pneumonia Pnockout, the nation’s largest pneumococcal pneumonia immunization program. More than 600 hospitals and senior centers immunized more than 100,000 individuals in the first three months of the program, and the program’s educational messages reached more than 50 million individuals and health professionals.
Quit for Good, a smoking cessation program that combined behavior modification therapies with nicotine-replacement treatment.
International Drug Free Youth, a community-based program for hospitals and health centers to use to combat drug abuse.
New Hope, an educational program for physicians to use with their patients to help them address the sometimes overwhelming fear caused by a diagnosis of breast cancer.
For You. For Life., a patient education program that helped women who were diagnosed with breast cancer to explore their treatment options.
Be Stroke Smart, an educational program to help health consumers understand strokes, and how to treat and prevent them.
Executive education
Mr. Baumann has developed major executive education programs, such as Future Focus Forums, which were developed to help senior hospital executives deal with change, and used sponsorships to maximize financial return on the programs, and publication partnerships to extend the reach of the Forums to larger audiences. He was also a leader of AHA's online education strategy and served as AHA's board representative on CareLearning, an Internet-based education company serving hospitals and physicians.
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| Herman Baumann, Principal, Green Line Strategies |
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