Steven Littlehale

Cofounder, Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes

The proportions of the epidemic are staggering: more than 3.6 million middle and high school-age kids are e-cigarette users.

With the number of kids using e-cigarettes up 48% among middle school-age kids and 78% among high school-age kids, vaping is the “most serious adolescent public health crisis” the U.S. has faced in decades, in the words of Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes.

Now, consumers are showing up at emergency rooms with “mysterious” symptoms.

Meredith Berkman cofounded PAVE in 2018, along with Diana Alessi and Dorian Fuhrman, after she discovered her son was part of that whole new generation getting hooked on nicotine. Berkman and Fuhrman have been building on their grassroots campaign since an unauthorized JUUL representative came into their sons’ ninth-grade classroom and promoted the product as “totally safe.”

Berkman’s voice is a force in the ongoing debate on how the country should grapple with nicotine use among young people. She’s put a human face to the unfolding crisis in the media and even on Capitol Hill, when in July 2019, she testified before the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy.

PAVE’s point of view will be especially prominent as the public scrutinizes the ways in which e-cigarette companies allegedly market toward young people. The group has previously advocated for the Food and Drug Administration to implement a “total ban on all flavors” so vaping will appeal less to kids.

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VP and managing director, Meredith Targeted Media Health

Asked about the annual print-is-dead declarations aired in and around health media, John Kenyon has an emotional response: that they “nauseate” him. “We have to be more defensive about arming ourselves so that everybody knows the continued power of print. The industry has to rally,” he said to MM&M this year.

Kenyon has almost single-handedly taken on this task. As publisher of three print titles that are exclusive to point-of-care destinations — Time Health, People Health and Health Reports — Kenyon has a vested interest in proclaiming print’s virtues to anyone who will listen. At the same time, he is recognized as a publisher with genuine editorial integrity.

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EVP, Global corporate affairs and CCO, Johnson & Johnson

Few chief communications officers have a busier year ahead than Johnson & Johnson’s Michael Sneed, what with ongoing court cases around the pharma, medical device and consumer giant’s role in the opioid crisis and continuing concerns about cancer risks over its talc-based baby powder.

Added to that, Sneed has taken on extra duties since the elimination of the CMO role at J&J that led to the departure of incumbent and former Coca-Cola marketer Alison Lewis over a “change in its business model.”

Sneed built a content lab at J&J to develop stories and distribute them through the appropriate earned and owned channels, working closely with the company’s legal team in a highly regulated environment.

As he told The PR Week podcast last year, marketing and communications is merging and you need a 360-degree approach to reach consumers where they are 24/7. That messaging will be very interesting to watch over the next 12 months given the current context.

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CEO, GCI Health

Coming up on her 10-year anniversary as CEO of GCI Health, Wendy Lund has focused on worldwide expansion. In the past few years alone, GCI has established a beachhead on two new continents, via two offices in Europe and one in Asia.

Before joining GCI Health in 2010, Lund worked in two prominent client-side roles, as a marketing VP at Planned Parenthood and at the National League of Nursing.

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Acting president and CEO, Planned Parenthood

In the middle of a tumultuous summer, which saw the venerable nonprofit battling the federal government, Planned Parenthood named Alexis McGill Johnson its new acting president and CEO. Johnson, a champion of civil rights, has spent the bulk of her career attempting to effect social justice. Among others, she has worked for and with the New York Civil Liberties Union, Citizen Change, Citizen Engagement Lab and the Perception Institute. The latter is a racial bias research group she cofounded.

Johnson previously served as a Planned Parenthood board member for nearly a decade and as board chair from 2013 to 2015. As acting president, she leads the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

Johnson assumes leadership of the organization at a pivotal moment. While the nonprofit has been at the center of fierce debates for years, advocates worry the current conservative Supreme Court could overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. Additionally, the government has attempted to strip Title X federal funds from Planned Parenthood this year, a move the group is battling in court.

Don’t expect Johnson to adopt a conciliatory approach to the challenges. “State lawmakers across the country, this administration and our opposition have zeroed in on abortion and Planned Parenthood, and they have made it so that we have to fight to stay alive and to fulfill our mission,” Johnson said in a July interview with Colorlines. “We don’t have the luxury to pretend that these attacks can be ignored. There is no sitting this out and hoping for the best. So we fight, because we have to, and because we are right. Everyone deserves access to health care. It’s a basic human right.”

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