We could not be more excited to kick-off this year’s WEGO Health Awards celebration. With over 6,000 nominations and over 130,000 endorsements, the 8th annual WEGO Health Awards celebration has proved to be the biggest one yet!
The WEGO Health Awards are so exciting – it truly is a celebration throughout the entire awards season. This week during our virtual WEGO Health Awards ceremony, we’ll come together with giveaways, twitter chats and the release of the WEGO Health Patient Leader directory. We’re using this week to celebrate the entire Patient Leader community.
We’ll also spend the week highlighting the achievements of each of the 75 WEGO Health Awards finalists and share in their excitement! Every single one of them has such a tremendous impact, we can’t wait to help share their stories. Get ready to be inspired!
And of course, each day of the virtual ceremony we’ll announce WEGO Health Awards winners. These winners will then be invited to attend our live WEGO Health Awards ceremony at HLTH in October.
This year, we are honored to partner with HLTH to bring the 2019 WEGO Health Awards winners to health’s biggest stage. With over 5,000+ attendees and 300+ speakers, this is an event you don’t want to miss.
HLTH is committed to making sure that patients have a voice at the table. What better way to ensure the patient voice is represented than by showcasing the top 15 Patient Leaders voted on by their peers and industry?
So how will all of this work? The following is the 2019 WEGO Health Awards Virtual Ceremony agenda.
WEGO Health Awards Kick-Off
On Wednesday, September 18th at 10 am, we’ll kick off the celebration with a Facebook Live on the WEGO Health Facebook page with Network Team members Julie and Kristen. Tune in to hear the low down on this week’s festivities and giveaways! During this live, we’ll go over the agenda, what to expect this week and how to make sure you’re entered into the BIG giveaway.
9 AM ET | Celebrating the Finalists
Each morning, Wednesday through Friday, at 9 am ET, we’ll be releasing 5 WEGO Health Awards category videos to highlight the finalists. Throughout the day please make sure to get these finalists some love by commenting and sharing! Let’s be sure to recognize these tremendous finalists for all of the work that they conduct.
Though the categories and finalists will initially be posted to Facebook, we will also be sharing on Instagram and Twitter that day.
The WEGO Health Awards category finalists will be released per the following schedule:
1 PM ET | #WEGOHealthChat
Join us on Twitter Wednesday through Friday at 1 pm ET for a #WEGOHealthChat.
To come up with the topics for this year’s WEGO Health Awards #WEGOHealthChats we had an open call for suggestions on the WEGO Health platform. With more than 150 responses submitted, we selected the following topics based on the network’s hot topics!
Wednesday | Patient Leader BurnOut
This was by far the most requested topic! Incorporating questions raised by Marianne Drexler, Jed Finley, Erin Smith, Kristina Dulaney, and Allison Rosen, in this #WEGOHealthChat, we’ll tackle how to avoid burnout. How do you know when you’re juggling too much? When do you need to slow down, delegate or cut back on your duties? Regardless of how long you’ve been advocating, there’s so much to learn from each of us. Take a deep breath and join us for a discussion on finding balance in your life.
Thursday | Patient Leader Town Hall
With so many thought-provoking topics submitted, we decided today’s chat would be a mix of questions asked by our network! From how you got started, to networking, to managing your privacy, to feeling confident, this #WEGOHealthChat will revolve all-around your Patient Leader journey. And most importantly, sharing the knowledge and experience you’ve gained thus far. We have Jamie Roger, Christine Frost, Benjamin Di’Costa, Kristal Kent, Rachel Hiles, and Kate Mitchell to thank for this discussion!
Friday| Amplifying Each Other’s Causes
It was clear that our network wanted to chat about condition-specific topics! In this #WEGOHealthChat, we’ll be combining the ideas of Barby Ingle, Myisha Malone King, Erin Elizabeth, Kimberly Dross, and Amanda Greene to talk about our specific communities. We’ll tackle the conditions that we face, our best tips for patients and beyond. By sharing each other’s facts and tips to our own audiences on Twitter we can help make a bigger impact. Let’s learn about each other’s cause AND help each other amplify their message.
6 PM ET | Winners Announced
Each night at 6 pm ET, we’ll be announcing the winners of the 5 award categories announced earlier that day. These winners will be announced in the release of a video on our WEGO Health Facebook page. Tune into the WEGO Health Facebook page for the announcement!
Though the categories and finalists will initially be posted to Facebook, we will also be sharing on Instagram and Twitter that day.
The WEGO Health Awards category winners will be released per the following schedule:
To enter, simply login to your WEGO Health Profile and complete your profile by Friday, September 20th at 12 pm ET. Once you save your profile you’ll be entered into the giveaway! If you already have a complete profile, it doesn’t hurt to revisit and see if there is anything to update.
The winner of the giveaway will be announced Friday during the winner announcements at 6 pm on Facebook.
BONUS | With the new public Patient Directory, a complete profile not only allows other Patient Leaders to connect and collaborate with you but it allows newly-diagnosed patients who turn to google to find your voice in their darkest time.
Please note complete mailing address, email or phone number will not be listed in your public profile.
We can’t wait to see the connections and collaborations that come from this new directory!
