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ZPB aquires specialist healthcare PR firm Journalista


Today ZPB Associates announces the acquisition of PR specialists Journalista to further establish ZPB as the most connected insight-led independent health communications consultancy in the UK.

Both businesses have been established for over ten years and have previously combined forces to deliver award-winning campaigns for clients including Dr Foster (shortlisted for PR Week Media Campaign of the Year) and Patient Opinion (winner PRCA Evaluation Award).

The combined teams have unique healthcare experience, team members having previously worked at NHS England, health regulators, pharma, key sector media, hospital trusts, and data firms. Together the businesses will now build on ZPB’s reputation for bringing insight, intelligence and authenticity to its communications and market strategies.

The expansion is part of ZPB’s strategic growth programme launched earlier this year. It has seen the business further establish itself in the digital health space with its relaunch of the Digital Healthcare Council, and win more pharma business, most recently with the PAGB. ZPB have also signed up three new senior advisors, former NHS CEO Paul Mears; Chairman of Croydon NHS Health Services, Michael Bell; and former MHRA NED, and current DCMS NED, Matthew Campbell-Hill.

ZPB Founder and CEO, Zoe Bedford said: “We have a particular skill in bringing new insights through our strong understanding of health system dynamics, data, what you can and can’t do with it, and how to use it in high-impact campaigns. Often people who understand data don’t know how to communicate, and people who know how to communicate don’t know how to work with data. That’s ZPB’s niche. Boosting our communications offer is critical to us having even more impact with these insights, so bringing Journalista into our team is a really exciting development for us. “We have worked alongside Journalista founder Holly and her team for a number of years, often sharing clients, so this feels like a natural move. We know that clients prefer independent, highly-specialised consultancies like ours, so this allows us to remain independent whilst having a bigger team with more resource to compete with some of the larger players.” Journalista Founder, Holly Sutton said: “ZPB and Journalista operate in similar spaces, with shared values, mutually supportive services and a vision for making complex issues clearer for people across health and social care, research and digital. “We’ve done great work together in the past and our teams are similarly drawn from varied specialist backgrounds, so it makes sense for us to join forces to better support and expand what we offer to our healthcare, research, social support and university clients. Becoming part of ZPB means we can offer a stronger proposition to compete for the opportunities arising in the fusion of health and social care, research and digital.”

The acquisition will bring together Journalista’s roster, which includes Healthcare UK, Big White Wall and Enterprise Research Centre, alongside ZPB’s clients, including Novartis, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Push Doctor, to further extend their combined reach into services, digital health and pharma.

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