Meredith Rae Vehar, MPA, is Director of Communications at Huntsman Cancer Institute. Since joining the cancer center more than 20 years ago, Meredith strives to be an agent of progress and enable others to recognize their potential. She leads a team of creative communication professionals who represent the cancer center through brand management, social media, web content and design, publications, multimedia, and internal communications. This meaningful work is very personal to her, and she sees camaraderie, sincerity, and laughter as key.
Meredith earned her Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Utah in 2018, along with a master’s certificate in health communication. Since 2021, she has served on the steering committee of the Cancer Marketing and Communications Association (CMCA). In 2024, she and her team were honored to host the annual conference in Salt Lake City. She currently serves as Vice Chair of CMCA and will lead the organization as Chair in Spring 2026.
Outside of work, Meredith loves running, hiking mountain trails, and traveling with her two teenagers.
Josh Dougherty:
Welcome to A Brave New Podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing in the healthcare space, but more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.
Hello and welcome to another episode of A Brave New Podcast. I'm excited to have Meredith Rae Vehar join me today. She is the Director of Communications for Huntsman Cancer Institute. More than that, she's a colleague and a friend, who I've worked with for a number of years, who is doing really important work to spread the brand of Huntsman Cancer Institute, but more importantly, the brand of cancer research and high-level cancer treatment across the Mountain West—from Salt Lake City to Utah to really the entire Mountain West region.
She is also a Vice Chair of the CMCA (the Cancer Marketing & Communication Association) which is really the organization where communications professionals in this space all meet together, share ideas, and push each other to do better at spreading the word about cancer research, which is really vital for all of us because cancer is so prevalent throughout our society. Today, we're going to dive into conversations about brand, about storytelling, about the importance of cancer research, but I think more importantly about the real life impact that the work that Huntsman Cancer Institute and others in this field do. I'm so excited to share the conversation with you, so without further ado, let's jump in. Well, hi, Meredith. Welcome to the show, so glad to have you on.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Thank you for having me, Josh.
Josh Dougherty:
Excellent. Well, I'd love—before we dive into—I know we're going to spend a lot of time talking about what it means to build a brand and do great marketing in the cancer research space—but before we do that, I'd love for you to share a little bit with me about your career path and where it's taking you, just so our audience can get a chance to know you a bit.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Sounds good. Well, I've been at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah for just over 20 years, which I often don't think that I'm old enough to say that, but sure enough, I am. I guess my career path, as an undergrad in college, I studied English with an emphasis in creative writing. I actually loved poetry and wrote and studied poetry, so believe it or not, that led me to a lifelong career in communications. I often will say never underestimate a humanities degree. I think it helps to really expand the depth and breadth of just the human experience and the things that we learn and how we communicate with each other, be that through poetry or creative writing or blog posts, honestly.
That's kind of where I started out. Right after college, I worked in strategic comms for a while for an information design company. Then, I worked for a publishing company in Park City, Utah, which was a lot of fun and a lot of pressure and made me a very attentive editor. So that has served me very well over my professional career.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I think when you have to have things going out in print, all of a sudden you're very careful.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Very careful, and it also goes to show even editors need editors. We often had three or four sets of eyeballs on those publications before they would go to press because once it's there, there's no fixing it, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yep. Yep, and I'm also relating to your comments about your degree. I was a history in Latin American studies, and here I am working in brand and marketing, right? So-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah. Yeah. Go humanities.
Josh Dougherty:
Exactly. Well, now I know you've been at Huntsman for a long time, but you are leading the communications team there. I'd love for you to share a little bit about HCI for those who don't know about GEO and the work that you're doing right now.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Great, so Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, for a cancer hospital, we really are kind of young. We really opened the doors in, let's see, I think it was 1999 when the first building opened and that was primarily research. We did have an outpatient clinic floor. Then, over the course of time, I started in 2005, and as I mentioned before, that was one year after the very first hospital was built. That had inpatient floors as well as much more clinic space. Since then, we've grown just exponentially. I mean, it's been really incredible to watch. There was another expansion on the cancer hospital since I was here. The building that I'm sitting in presently was built in 2017 and is focused entirely on research. Then, just last year we opened another building. It's an eight-story hospital building with more space to treat patients.
Unfortunately, one of the things with cancer is that there are plenty of patients to treat, so in the course of time that I've been here, truly, it's been this just rapid expansion to meet the need. As the city that I live in, Salt Lake City, and the state that I live in, Utah, and the region has really grown rapidly over the last couple of decades. Obviously, more population becomes more percentages of people who are going to get cancer. There's a not awesome statistic that about one in two of us will experience some type of cancer diagnosis in our lifetimes, and so there are always people to serve.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, and I think probably the case is that you still can't keep up as fast as building can be built, new research facilities put up, like there isn't an ability to keep up with the demand, sadly.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Exactly. Yep, exactly, and that's why I know that I think we'll talk about this a bit more, but there's a national initiative through the National Cancer Institute to really help keep that momentum and have cancer centers that are designated by the National Cancer Institute, and of which we are one here at Huntsman Cancer Institute, to really try to work together and collaborate because more minds, more questions, more thoughts, more creativity, the closer we can get to actually finding answers to really challenging problems in cancer.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Let's talk about that a little bit, actually, since you just mentioned it, but obviously the national, or there's the NCI-Designated Cancer Centers, and you'll have to tell me the exact number. I think it's in the 70s, right?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah. Yep. I verified before talking because I thought that might come up. There are 73 cancer centers across the nation, and there are 73 cancer centers in 37 states.
Josh Dougherty:
Okay. Yeah, so I'm interested to hear about this. It’s a collaborative effort, right? Everyone's working-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Mm-hmm.
Josh Dougherty:
... together to solve numerous types of cancer to help people get better or live with their disease in a way that is better than maybe it was a decade ago or et cetera, but you're also trying to build a strong and differentiated brand for your own cancer center. How do you think about that, existing in a really collaborative space that is, I think, essential for getting to cures and also differentiating your own organization?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah. Yeah. Here at Huntsman Cancer Institute, we're in one of the more unique situations of the NCI-Designated Cancer Centers. I mentioned that of the 73 cancer centers in 37 states, we are the only one in the five-state Mountain West. So, that includes what we call our catchment area or the area we serve. It includes the states of Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, and Montana. Basically, depending on how great you are with geography, we're that huge mass in the Western U.S.
It's some really big states that are big and blocky, and it's a lot of landmass. It's actually 17% of the Continental United States that we consider the area that we serve here at Huntsman Cancer Institute. There are some places like New York State, for example, you might have a cancer center that's literally a block or two away from another cancer center, so differentiating a brand and service lines and that type of thing is a little bit of a different story than what we have here.
We really kind of are the only game in town when it comes to NCI designation, but it doesn't mean, again, that we... Branding is critical even for us where we're growing to meet the need and the demand. But there are some people who may want to fly out of state and go to another cancer center or fly across the country and go there or maybe choose more of a local entity for their treatment. It still matters that we talk about what sets us apart and really uphold our brand. Some of those things, being an NCI-Designated Cancer Center, it means that we meet the highest national standards for research and for treatment.
Again, that's really important because there are some hospitals that can treat cancer and various diseases, but we actively—on any given day—have hundreds of people who are researching these diseases and really just have dedicated their lives literally to finding answers to improve treatments and cures. We talk about our brand as being about discovery and innovation. We're constantly looking to from whether it's advanced equipment, we just got some really cool robotic surgery equipment just this past year that's just so high tech and so cool and so amazing. Really minimally invasive and quicker recovery times. Just some really, really cool stuff like that.
We also have therapies like proton therapy that aren't offered anywhere near us here in Salt Lake City. Also, there are some advancements in AI and using AI technologies to understand reading different imaging, and things like that that really help. There are research studies around this that help improve the standard of care every day. We learn in the 20 years that I've been here, I mean, it's really been outstanding. There have been so many changes and different treatments and different ... I feel like I'm rambling a whole super ton, Josh.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
I'm going to stop rambling.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit about, so you talked about new treatments, more advanced treatments. Another way that you're leading an innovation is part of being an NCI-Designated Cancer Center is the amount of clinical trials you're running, so also-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Clinical trials, yes.
Josh Dougherty:
... pioneering kind of novel treatment as well. How does that work?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah, absolutely.
Josh Dougherty:
How does that work? Explain to me exactly how a clinical trial works.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Well, I can give you my non-medical explanation, but at any given time at Huntsman Cancer Institute, we have upwards of 320, 325 clinical trials open. Those are for different types of cancers, and they're different types of trials. Some of them might be ... In general, there are four phases of a clinical trial from the Phase 1 is first in human, and it's usually a small group of people, just sometimes 20 to 80. Then, throughout the phases, more people are added, and then they're testing drugs or different drug combinations. Then, later in later phases, it gets to be thousands of people.
Clinical trials are in and of themselves cooperative often. Some of the treatments that are being tested for different diseases might be pretty rare. The diseases themselves might be pretty rare, so in one geographic location, there might not be very many people. Often a trial can be held at different cancer centers, and then that way you're reaching patients who have a certain disease, and you're giving more people access to new treatment trials and things like that.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally. Okay, and you brought up other cancer centers, so I'm going to bring it back to that. I think one of the other reasons I was excited to talk to you is in your role as the Vice Chair of the Steering Committee of the Cancer Marketing Communications Association, so you have a really unique view of all 73 of these organizations and how they're doing their work. My question about that was you obviously have the collaboration and treatment and research, but do you think the ability to differentiate is similar across all those cancer centers? You talked about discovery and innovation being kind of at the core of your brand. Is that the same across other organizations? Or are there different areas of emphasis that people are putting on their brands in different organizations?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
What I've learned from several of my colleagues from the Cancer Marketing & Communications Association is that, by and large, we have the same or very similar challenges, and each cancer center is set up differently. Some of these cancer centers might be in really smaller communities. Some are in major metropolitan cities, and so that also means that then in our little microcosm of a communications or marketing and public affairs team, the way that those are set up and structured can be really different. Some teams are really tiny. You might have one or two people honestly doing all of the marketing and communications for a cancer center. Some have several dozen people.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
We've got about one dozen here at Huntsman Cancer Institute, so I think often the name of the game can be, for those like us, it's scrappy. You've got to kind of learn how to do a lot of different roles and you've got to learn how to step in and help your colleagues in various areas as needed.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, and in the midst of being scrappy, I think one thing I've always admired about the work that you and your team do is you tell compelling stories. You showcase patient stories in a really, I think, compelling and delicate way as is required when talking about patients who are going through a major disease. You showcase research in a compelling way. What goes into this? How do you work to tell such compelling stories, to tell them in a compelling way when you're also spread pretty thin across all the things you're trying to accomplish?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you. Thank you so much. I'm incredibly proud of my team. They're at the core just really creative professionals and are really, really dedicated. One thing, it's related to this, but I want to kind of go back to the question of, what is branding? How do I define branding or what does that kind of mean in the space in which I work? There's a quote from ... There's a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at UPenn, and his name is Dr. Americus Reid, and he has this quote that I love, and it ... "A brand is so much more than a tagline or a logo. It is a meaning system, a promise to deliver on values." That really ... It resonates with me so much because we have a mission and a vision and guiding principles as an institution, and those matter.
I mean, it matters to have kind of a guiding light, a North Star that everyone's shooting for, but it's lip service unless you're actually practicing that. I see that as, again, the meaning system, how we're actually delivering on those things we call our mission or our principles. If we're not actually walking the walk, then it doesn't count, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
So I see-
Josh Dougherty:
I think about that ... I mean, you've really made something come to mind ... I've been reading a book about truth by the ... I don't know if you're familiar with the documentary filmmaker, Werner Hertzog. He's a-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Uh-huh. Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
... and he wrote a book about truth, and he talks about how there are facts and then there's truth and they're intimately related, but there has to be meaning imbued into the facts often. That one really resonated with me as I was reading it, and what you're saying exactly resonates. You could have a mission, you can have goals, but what is the compelling, the meaning behind those things is essential to making it-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
... be both a cause that everyone can get behind and something that people actually want to get involved with or seek treatment from, et cetera.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think I see this in two kind of branches, I guess. And I'll start with one that is just based on this kind of perception of a place and an association that we make with a thing, and then a relationship that we might have with that place or that thing, which is still about brand. I think about going through a drive-through and ordering a latte. If the person who hands it to you is not nice, you're going to leave with a kind of unpleasant feeling about said latte shop, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yep.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
It matters clear down to that person who is the representative of the brand, of the place. I know that anyone on my team who has really found success here, whether they stayed a short amount of time or long amount of time, they see themselves as that representative. I know that that's true from the person in valet when a patient pulls up in the circle to be dropped off to the nurse in the clinic room. I mean, everybody, me, me as the communications director, if I see a patient wandering lost in the hallway, which absolutely happens, we have a really big building.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
How I respond to that person as a representative wearing my badge on my jacket, the way that I treat that person is representative of this organization at large, and so I think that's one of the ... I am getting back to your question, I promise. It's-
Josh Dougherty:
This is fine. That's good stuff.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
... that what it is. I mean, that's kind of the special ingredient there is when people feel and see themselves as connected to this bigger picture. Our former CEO, Mary Beckerle, who just very recently handed the baton on that position, would talk about how a story about walking upon some people who are building a well, and there's one person who's ... The passerby asks, "What are you doing?" He said, "Oh, well, I'm laying bricks." The passerby asks the next person, "What are you doing?" The person responds, "I'm building a cathedral." I really love that because that helps me stay personally connected to the mission of ... I'm not just here laying bricks. I'm really helping build this thing that is beautiful in its own right that really matters and has the potential to make a huge difference and impact for people.
Josh Dougherty:
I think that changes the frame of everything, right?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
All of a sudden that interaction with someone in the hall is a totally different interaction. The story you tell, the outreach you do, whatever it is, completely changes because every little, small detail becomes an essential part of the experience.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Absolutely, and you see how each person's contribution matters, like how clean our building is makes a difference that every single person who works in environmental services is critical to helping us cure cancer. I mean, as cheesy as that may seem on the outside, I really mean it. I really, really mean it. If people see their connection to this, that's what makes the difference. The other branch that I wanted to mention is also it's that plus, I guess, it's really feeling how personal this is. I mentioned earlier that the odds are one in two of us are going to have a cancer diagnosis at some point in our lives, so over time, the older we get, the more likely it is you're going to know somebody who has been diagnosed with cancer, and so it also really can be personal.
It's incredibly personal to me. I certainly wouldn't have guessed 20 years ago that it would be as personal as it is now and as personal as it has become, but I've lost two of my sisters to cancer, both of whom were treated here at Huntsman Cancer Institute. I know not only in my professional role, but I know in my personal life, the look on the face of the person who's bringing my sister, her putting on a tray matters. It makes a difference. The friendliness of the person who's bringing her a wheelchair, it matters.
Josh Dougherty:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
That's all branding. It really is.
Josh Dougherty:
It is.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
It's humanity and it's also branding.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Well, thank you for being vulnerable about your personal experience. I'm so sorry that I wish no one had to have that experience, but that's a heavy experience, but it's also incredible to hear you talk about your perspective. When it becomes personal, it unlocks a new way to think about things, right?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Absolutely, and I know there are people on my team who cancer may not have impacted them quite as directly as it has me. We have this just amazing privilege to get to know people, to get to know patients and their caregivers and to learn their stories. They share that with us and they share those really personal moments. Again, I'm just so proud of my team because they take that to heart. It's not just another day, another project.
Josh Dougherty:
Sure.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
You really take it to heart. I have one writer in particular who every time there's a specific patient and her husband, when they come in for checkups, they text him. They text the writer who wrote a story about them like two years ago, and if he's in the office, he'll go pop down to the clinic and say hi. I just ... That's personal.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Yeah. It's powerful. It's so cool to hear about like here's a connection that is a lasting connection based on approaching your work in a personal way and being open to that experience.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
By making this personal, you're telling compelling stories. How do you prioritize the right stories to tell? That story, one patient's story is probably just as compelling as the other, so how do you go about prioritizing and hopefully sharing the right stories?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah, that's a great question, and here's where it's as personal and all-encompassing as we'd like to be, you do have to prioritize. There's only a certain amount of hours in a workday, and that's where this is also part of branding, but we have a really strong executive leadership team here at Huntsman Cancer Institute. I mentioned Mary Beckerle, who is the former CEO and now recently named is Brad Cairns. He is our new CEO, and the executive leadership team has helped with the input from people across the organization, across the whole institution, but we have a strategic plan, it's a five-year strategic plan, and so that helps us set priorities so we know particular areas of focus that we want to be paying attention to.
Those often need to help lead what we're choosing to cover. One of the strategic areas of focus, one of the pillars as we call it, is access. I mentioned that Huntsman Cancer Institute serves this just gigantic area of the country, and a lot of the land is rural or frontier, which means not a whole lot of folks live there, right?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Access is a really, really big deal for us. How can we ... We want to give, no matter if you live in a town that has a population of 500 people. We want to serve those people as well as we try to serve those who live right here in the city. So one of the ways that we're trying to do that is ... Well, I'll give two examples. There are lots of ways we're trying to do that, but two examples are that we have an affiliate hospital network, so there are some hospitals across that five-state Mountain West and also one in Colorado—in a town called Grand Junction—that's pretty near the border of Utah. Those affiliates have access to our providers here. We also have clinical trials at some of those affiliate hospitals, so people have access to those treatment trials, and that really helps us to expand our reach and really provide this National Cancer Institute-designated level care in these more remote areas.
Another really amazing program that we do is called Huntsman At Home, and that started just locally within a ... I think it began as a 30-mile radius of the cancer hospital, but there were nurse practitioners who would go to people's homes and could provide them treatment where they are at home. This kept a lot of patients out of emergency departments and also just helped them do symptom management in a place where they could be more comfortable in their own home spaces, and so that extended into three rural counties in Central Utah. That's really improved access and has been really incredibly, a really, really incredible program, so Huntsman At Home is something that we've been really proud of.
Then, the other is, we realize … I mentioned building upon building upon building over the last 20 years. We're actually going to open another location in a county just to the south of the Salt Lake Valley in Utah County in a city called Vineyard. We had a groundbreaking earlier this year and that's slated to open to patients in summer of 2028. So we'll have another comprehensive cancer center that's ... I think it's about 30, 35 miles or so to the south, but that's going to save so many people hours and hours of time and travel. Which again, if you're sick, you don't feel well, either sick from treatment or you just maybe you don't have a great prognosis and you want to spend more time with your family and not sitting on the freeway in traffic, it's going to be a real game changer for people.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, I imagine, and I think that it just shows that your commitment to being one of the things that we've spoken about as we've worked together over the years is the commitment to showing up where people are and providing them the care they need. I think it's a cool expression of that. How are you leveraging your brand to engage with this whole new community? It's certainly kind of in the Salt Lake City metro area but also a little bit further out. How is the Huntsman brand maybe evolving or shifting to be able to engage with this new community?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah, it's interesting because there are some people ... I'm going to back up a minute. I had the opportunity to go down to a ... they called it Vineyard Days to a community. It's like a fair and they had booths and stuff and it was really fun. I had the opportunity to go with some of my team down and spend the day there and hand out fun things for kids and just tell more about our plans for being down in that area. A lot of people, people who had been touched by cancer, were aware of us and know about Huntsman Cancer Institute, and we have a really strong reputation for excellence and for exceptional care, so some of it's definitely going to be just name recognition.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Luckily, a big part of brand is often word of mouth, and just again, back to that, a relationship and experience, and so we do have that with a lot of people who are farther down in our state. I think in general, the sentiment is they're just really excited to save time, to have more time with their families, but there are also some differences there. The Utah County is one of the vast ... It's fluctuated at certain times, but it has been one of the fastest growing counties in the country for several years. It's a really young population with a lot of families and it's very community-based, so there are things that we've considered in the planning and planning of the building that will be down there.
That's things like maybe a daycare. If you're going to go get a mammogram and have young kids, maybe there will be space for them to be watched while you have that appointment, for example, and so that does matter. We're considering the community that we're moving into. It's not just a replication of what we have up here. It's definitely going to be what the community needs. There's also a really cool opportunity down there in terms of research and really training the next generation of researchers and clinicians because it's closer to ... There are several academic institutions down there. There's Utah Valley University, also BYU. That area of our state is often referred to as Silicon Slopes. Kind of like a Silicon Valley of Utah, and there's a lot of tech companies there, so Adobe is there, for example, and many, many others, but there's some really exciting opportunities for data science and AI and-
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
... research in that kind of future, which we don't focus on a ton up here right now, so a lot of really cool opportunities coming.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, and that proximity just makes it easier to do, so that's really exciting. I'd love to jump back a little bit because I know we kind of jumped ahead in what we were going to talk about, but I do want to take time to chat a little bit about how to convey the importance of cancer research and cancer research funding in a challenging funding environment. I know this is something-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
... you've been facing. Almost everyone doing cancer research this year has been really challenged by that.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
What advice do you have to folks, or how have you been learning to effectively advocate for the vital importance of this type of work?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah. Yeah, and it is vitally important. I mean, any pause in a clinical trial, for example, I mean, a clinical trial could be paused for a couple of months and it could set knowledge back years. It's been a scary time in terms of funding for cancer research, absolutely, and so we've had to get creative and get, again, I mentioned the word "scrappy" earlier. We've had to get a little scrappy. I actually have a really cool example, though, of something that we've done, and our communications and public affairs team has spearheaded a new campaign that we're calling Speak Up For Cancer Research. It's kind of this grassroots initiative where we decided we have such a great community of people who already know our brand, who we already have that relationship with them. They support us. They are our advocates. Honestly, they help us. They in their own way are influencers on social media.
Through this campaign, we have invited them to, and there are various groups and there are lot of parts and pieces to this, but I'll give a couple of examples … A couple of months ago, we had an event up here and invited people who are part of a fundraising events group called Huntsman Heroes. I myself am also a member of the Huntsman Heroes and run races and raise money for cancer research every year in honor of my sisters. We invited the Huntsman Heroes group and also a patient advocacy group and some other patients who are really active on social media who share a lot of their stories just on their own accord. We invited them up to an event one evening here at the cancer hospital, and we had some speakers talk.
We had a researcher named Alana Welm, who's done some just really incredible outstanding research with breast cancer metastasis, and one of our providers, Tom Varghese, and he is a cardiothoracic surgeon. They both spoke about research and research that they're involved with and the importance of just keeping this momentum and really helping encourage people who, again, are in their own way influencers and kind of the boots on the ground right now. Folks who speak up, speak up and talk about how important this is.
We had a really fun event where they spoke. Some of our patients stood at the end and offered their stories. We had a young woman who ... I can share this. She's signed a release form. She's on social media, but she's a young woman who has lung cancer, and she was there with her husband and actually met Tom Varghese at this event and spoke with him and then wound up moving forward getting a surgery that some other surgeons had been hesitant to do so.
Josh Dougherty:
Incredible.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
... it was really just a beautiful, serendipitous situation that was outstanding. Anyhow, that was one example, and then we toured labs. We dressed up in our protective equipment with goggles and funny white suits and stuff, and we got to go through different laboratories and hear directly from researchers about the kind of work that they're doing.
Anyway, that was one example of how we opened our doors and said, "Hey, you're already helping represent us and our brand and the importance of research and why this matters," and so we've really leaned into that. We also reached out to some local influencers and true celebrities who have been advocates for us in the past. One example is Ty Burrell. He was the dad on Modern Family. He's a Salt Lake resident, and he lost his dad to cancer, so he did a short video clip for us that we put on social media that just reinforces the importance of cancer research.
We've had some other rockstar patients in their own right do video clips like that for us that we put on social media. Yeah, it's been really cool. It's been really a beautiful opportunity to have people share their stories, but also they're speaking up for us. They're speaking up for the importance of this and how much it matters that we can't stop the momentum.
Josh Dougherty:
Mm-hmm. Is that kind of for someone like me who's not in the Salt Lake City area or not ... I mean, I have many connections into Huntsman from past work there, but is that what you'd encourage people around the country to, who are listening, be vocal about your stories, be vocal about the impact that cancer research has had on loved ones in your life or your own life?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's cancer is not political. It doesn't discriminate. Any person, any race, any political affinity, anyone's susceptible. It's definitely something that we need to all continue to stand behind and fund.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. I mean, it's a human experience, unfortunately-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
... a very shared human experience across the board.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yes.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah. Well, thank you for that. I'd encourage anyone listening to think about how they can raise their voice for this vital part of our society. It's a great success story of the last 25, 30 years of the progress we've made, and we don't want to lose that progress-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Absolutely.
Josh Dougherty:
... but I'd also like to, as we move towards kind of the end of our conversation, give you a chance to talk about the annual CMCA-PAMN conference that's upcoming in a few months. If you are familiar, you know what this is already, but if you are not, this is where fundraisers and communication experts and public affairs experts get together to talk about how to push forward the work of NCI-Designated Cancer Centers and of cancer research generally. What are some of the things people can look forward to at this year's event in Toronto?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah, it's going to be so much fun, first of all, with so much to learn. Yeah, with this event, we partner with the National Association of Cancer Center Development Offices, and yeah, the annual conference will be in Toronto. And we're staying at the Royal York Hotel, which is a beautiful historic hotel. It's going to be really easy to travel. It's right across from the train station. Toronto itself is a really great city, but as a member of the Steering Committee, we work throughout the whole year on the curriculum for the conference and a lot of thought, a lot of energy, a lot of really, really smart people come together from across the country to work on the different speakers and topics.
We always read all of the feedback from the prior conference and we take that into consideration and also look for any kind of what's on the cutting edge, what's trending, what do people really need to know to be at the very top of our industry. There's going to be a lot of really great programming there. It's such a cool opportunity to network and learn from other organizations—anyone who works in the cancer space—and participate. We learn about best practices, but also ways the other centers that might be a similar size as yours or maybe even smaller and successes that they've had in certain areas that you can learn from. It's always a just really stimulating, motivating experience, and it's just a highlight of my year, every year.
Josh Dougherty:
It's just good people, too. I think that's the thing-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
It's good people. Absolutely.
Josh Dougherty:
... and thank you for correcting my acronym. Obviously, it's NACCDO-CMCA this year. I used your old acronym, PAMN.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
No, that's okay. It was that for a long, long time, so-
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, yeah, so-
Meredith Rae Vehar:
... yeah.
Josh Dougherty:
... I encourage anyone if they're not planning to be there and that you are in this space to attend, learn, and meet some great people along the way. Meredith, thanks so much for an amazing conversation, for going deep in so many areas. How can people stay in touch with you and follow up on what you're doing?
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Yeah, thank you. I myself am on LinkedIn professionally. Definitely check out if you're not a member of the Cancer Marketing & Communications Association. The website is cmcaconnect.org. If you are a member, check it out anyway because we have a really cool website that the Steering Committee's been working hard on the last many, many months. There's a forum where you can post questions and get feedback from colleagues across the nation. Really, really cool benefit for folks throughout the year, so it's not just at the conference, but there are also webinars that we hold and a lot of opportunities for professional development and just connections, again, throughout the year.
I also wanted to share the hashtag that we're using on the Huntsman Cancer Institute social media channels is #SpeakUpForCancerResearch. If you look up that hashtag, #SpeakUpForCancerResearch, on Instagram specifically, you'll see these various clips that we have from different patients and our own influencers and how they are helping us promote the ongoing importance of funding cancer research.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. We'll share all those links inside the show notes as well so people can easily find them, and yeah, thanks so much for the conversation, Meredith, and can't wait to chat again soon.
Meredith Rae Vehar:
Thanks, Josh.
Josh Dougherty:
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing A Brave New Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a branding agency in Seattle, Washington, that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. Our producer is Rob Gregerson.