IQ, OGILVY SHARE HEALTH PACT
IQ Solutions, a Maryland-based communications firm focused on health information technology, and Ogilvy PR Worldwide have picked up a five-year PR contract with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, one of the National Institutes of Health.
IQ will support the institute’s public information and communications branch on the contract, worth $14.7M if all options are picked up. Ogilvy was tapped for media outreach efforts.
Ilean Quintas, CEO and founder of IQS, said she worked with the institute from 1997-2007 handling inquiries, exhibits and campaigns like “Milk Matters” and the National Children’s Study. The firm currently has a pact with the NIH’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.
The NICHHD, which handles issues like reproductive and infant health, was named for the late Shriver in 2008 by an act of Congress.
BGR FORGES COALITION TO NIX ‘OBAMACARE’
The Partnership for America, which calls President Obama’s health law “a great threat to our system of government,” has hired Barbour Griffith & Rogers to work for its repeal.
The D.C. organization says the law will put control of one seventh of the nation’s economy in the hands of federal bureaucrats and “for the first time mandating that Americans buy a product that they may not want.”
It is seeking to forge a coalition to lead the fight to “repeal and replace” the health law with a “realistic, consumer driven and market-based alternatives.”
BGR president Bob Wood, chief of staff to ex-Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, serves as legislative director of PfA.
Chairman Ed Rogers, a veteran of the Reagan White House, lobbies on PfA’s behalf with BRG government affairs principal Jennifer Larkin Luawski, aide to former Congressman Bob Dornan and director of House relations at the Heritage Foundation.
BGR also handles energy issues for the PfA.
WikiLeaks on Oct. 24 announced that it has been “forced to temporarily suspend its publishing operations and aggressively fundraise” to counter a banking blockade launched against it by BankAmerica, VISA, Western Union, MasterCard and PayPal.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange claims the move by the financial companies to refuse the processing of donations to the online site has destroyed 95 percent of its revenue. It sees the blockade as punishment for last year's publication of sensitive State Dept. documents. |
