Kathleen Lewton is a senior executive in the New York office of the world’s largest
public relations agency, Fleishman-Hillard, and is the Immediate Past President of the
Public Relations Society of America, the leading association for the professionals in this
field. She has a thirty-year career in public relation management, is the author of a
textbook on public relations, and writes and speaks extensively on the role of public
relation in corporations and organizations.
At Fleishman-Hillard, Ms. Lewton works with CEOs and senior management at leading
corporations and voluntary organizations, providing counsel on strategic positioning,
organizational reputation management, and crisis communications. The author of Public
Relations in Health Care: A Guide for Professionals, the only textbook of its kind and
now in its second printing, she was also the 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award winner from
the Health Academy of PRSA.
Ms. Lewton received a bachelor’s degree from Illinois Wesleyan University where she is
a member of the Board of Trustees. She has a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s
Medill School of Journalism and a master’s in health care administration from the
University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
The trade publication pre reporter cited her as one of four most admired professionals
in health care public relations, and Working Woman magazine profiled her as one of the
key people making news in hospital marketing. Her work has received dozens of award
including PRSA Silver Anvils, International Association of Business Communications Gold
Quills and the American Hospital Association’s Society for Healthcare Marketing and Public
Relations Touchstone Awards.
Ms. Lewton currently manages corporate reputation and product marketing programs for
Abbot Laboratories, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies; CV Therapeutics,
a California-based biotech firm; the University of Virginia Medical Center and the
Cleveland Clinic Foundation, among other clients. From 1993-1999, as director of the U.S.
health care practice for Porter Novelli public relations, her clients included the American
Medical Association, American Heart Association, Zimmer division of Bristol-Myers Squibb,
Eli Lilly and Co., Blue Cross Blue Shield of South of South Carolina, the Illinois
Association of HMOs, Intermountain Health Care, the Catholic Hospital Association, St.
Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics, and the
American Psychological Association.
Prior to her agency career, Ms. Lewton served as senior vice president for public
affairs and marketing at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, and at the
University Hospitals of Cleveland, as well as managing PR and marketing programs at
hospitals in the Toledo, Ohio area. She spent five years in university PR and began her
career as a newspaper reporter in Illinois.
Her areas of particular expertise include healthcare financing and reimbursement issues,
managed care, physician relations, health system integration, public affairs and grassroots
advocacy campaigns, strategic and marketing positioning for health care organizations, as
well as issues management and crisis communications, and stakeholder relations with
influential audiences.
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