The sights and chaos of an Emergency Center (EC) can be terrifying to children. That’s why ProMedica Toledo Hospital was one of the first hospitals to build a dedicated Pediatric Emergency Center to care for the special needs of children.

Our research showed the Pediatric EC was underutilized because parents didn’t understand that a child’s experience and care at a dedicated children’s emergency center is significantly different than the stressful experience and care found in a regular hospital ER.

The solution was to build a fully integrated awareness and educational campaign that centered on the message that children are special and require specialized emergency care. For the emotional hook, visuals captured the essence of a child’s world. The educational aspect explained why parents should bring their kids to an EC that specialized in treating children: physicians and staff are trained to help kids verbalize what’s wrong. They know how to get a child to be still for X-rays or scans. They can explain procedures in terms kids can understand to reduce the “scary” factor, and offer many more child-specific benefits.

After several years of flat or declining admissions, the refreshed awareness campaign increased traffic to ProMedica Toledo Hospital Pediatric EC by 10-12% each month during the life of the campaign. When the campaign ended, the center experienced a 12% drop in traffic, so the campaign was immediately restarted in 2013.