NESHCo 2026: What Healthcare Communicators Are Actually Talking About
NESHCo 2026: What Healthcare Communicators Are Actually Talking About
The energy at NESHCo 2026 was worth writing about. The sessions and speakers were excellent, and the room felt optimistic, determined, and proud of the work being done in healthcare communications.
That pride was on full display during the Lamplighter Gala Awards dinner on Thursday evening. We were honored to have our work with Bradley Hospital recognized with a Silver Award in the Websites category. Bradley is the nation’s first hospital dedicated exclusively to children’s mental health, and building a digital home that reflects that mission is work we care about deeply. You can read the full story here.
The themes that kept coming up
Three conversations repeated themselves across sessions and hallways throughout the conference.
The first was resource pressure. MarComm teams in healthcare are doing more with less, working through reduced budgets, leaner staff, and growing expectations for what digital communications need to deliver. Teams are solving for this with a mix of freelance and part-time support, reprioritized internal resources, and AI to help draft, proofread, and ideate. For agencies, that means recognizing where teams are stretched and helping them prioritize, not just execute. One useful lens came from a session by Brad Muncs: before taking on a new request, ask what priority it supports, what it costs in time and upkeep, and who owns it after launch. Those questions don’t decide yes or no, but they help teams choose the right response.
The second was AI. How is it changing the work? What does it mean for content strategy when a family’s first point of contact might be a generative search result rather than a hospital homepage? The questions don’t have clean answers yet, but they’re being asked at the right level. On the vendor side, SEO, GEO, and AEO were well represented at the conference, which tracks: healthcare organizations that invest in structured, authoritative content are the ones best positioned as AI-driven discovery becomes a bigger part of how patients and families find care. We’ve written about what AEO means specifically for healthcare communicators if you want to dig into that.
The third was the national healthcare narrative and how local organizations fit into it. With healthcare dominating national news, regional MarComm teams are thinking carefully about how to develop relationships with local media outlets, pitch stories that connect local healthcare to broader national conversations, and ensure their sites are set up to support and surface that content effectively. This ties directly to the AEO/GEO conversations happening elsewhere in the industry. Local media relationships only pay off if a site is structured to surface that story, with clean metadata and content that answers what local and national audiences are actually searching for. Building the relationship gets you halfway there. Optimizing the platform underneath it is what makes the visibility land.
The session that stuck with me
I attended a session from Argus, an agency we’ve partnered with on projects including Mass Problem Gambling. They presented the “Heads Up Boston” initiative, a youth mental health campaign developed with the Boston Public Health Commission.
What made it memorable was how the campaign came to be. Argus engaged directly with young people from the Boston area throughout the development process, not just for feedback, but for real creative direction. The “Heads Up” slogan came from one of those youth participants.
It was an inspirational story. And a good reminder of what’s possible when we listen with intention, bring inclusivity into all aspects of the work, and stay aligned with our clients and partners on purpose and mission.
What we took away
Beyond the sessions, NESHCo gave us the chance to engage with existing clients, reconnect with and broaden our network, and have substantive conversations with vendors around compliance technology, digital accessibility, website translation, and optimization. We also got to share some of our recent award-winning work with potential clients and celebrate past work, including Hope Health, with our client and agency partners.
The professionals in this space care about what they’re building. That came through in every conversation, and it’s a community we’re glad to be part of.
That pride was on full display during the Lamplighter Gala Awards dinner on Thursday evening. We were honored to have our work with Bradley Hospital recognized with a Silver Award in the Websites category. Bradley is the nation’s first hospital dedicated exclusively to children’s mental health, and building a digital home that reflects that mission is work we care about deeply. You can read the full story here.
The themes that kept coming up
Three conversations repeated themselves across sessions and hallways throughout the conference.
The first was resource pressure. MarComm teams in healthcare are doing more with less, working through reduced budgets, leaner staff, and growing expectations for what digital communications need to deliver.
The second was AI. How is it changing the work? What does it mean for content strategy when a family’s first point of contact might be a generative search result rather than a hospital homepage? The questions don’t have clean answers yet, but they’re being asked at the right level. On the vendor side, SEO, GEO, and AEO were well represented at the conference, which tracks: healthcare organizations that invest in structured, authoritative content are the ones best positioned as AI-driven discovery becomes a bigger part of how patients and families find care. We’ve written about what AEO means specifically for healthcare communicators if you want to dig into that.
The third was the national healthcare narrative and how local organizations fit into it. With healthcare dominating national news, regional MarComm teams are thinking carefully about how to develop relationships with local media outlets, pitch stories that connect local healthcare to broader national conversations, and ensure their sites are set up to support and surface that content effectively.
The session that stuck with me
I attended a session from Argus, an agency we’ve partnered with on projects including Mass Problem Gambling. They presented the “Heads Up Boston” initiative, a youth mental health campaign developed with the Boston Public Health Commission.
What made it memorable was how the campaign came to be. Argus engaged directly with young people from the Boston area throughout the development process, not just for feedback, but for real creative direction. The “Heads Up” slogan came from one of those youth participants.
It was an inspirational story. And a good reminder of what’s possible when we listen with intention, bring inclusivity into all aspects of the work, and stay aligned with our clients and partners on purpose and mission.
What we took away
Beyond the sessions, NESHCo gave us the chance to engage with existing clients, reconnect with and broaden our network, and have substantive conversations with vendors around compliance technology, digital accessibility, website translation, and optimization. We also got to share some of our recent award-winning work with potential clients and celebrate past work, including Hope Health, with our client and agency partners.
The professionals in this space care about what they’re building. That came through in every conversation, and it’s a community we’re glad to be part of.
