Duke Family Medicine Residency

What We Found

A national decline of interest in family medicine among medical students caused Duke Family Medicine Residency Program to close its doors to new recruits for over a year while the university reconsidered its approach.  When they ultimately decided to continue the program, Duke had less than three months to re-launch the program at the nation’s largest annual conference. In addition, they were still facing fierce competition due to the shrinking pool of applicants.

What We Did

Given the accelerated timeframe, VisionPoint Marketing conducted an abridged version of our strategy phase. We conducted high-level analysis, competitor research, reviews of past messaging and key one-on-one interviews with applicants who had chosen other residency programs over Duke’s. We met with key stakeholders to quickly identify the program’s business goals. VisionPoint determined the key to success was clearly communicating Duke’s differentiators and re-positioning the program in a way that focused on the newly developed, cutting-edge curriculum.

At the one and only annual conference to recruit prospective family medicine residents, the re-launch strategy was communicated in the exhibit space via projected motion graphics that highlighted the program’s key messaging points, new visual approach and leveraged the strong Duke brand. This gave a fresh new look to the program while leveraging the strong ‘Duke’ brand. Printed material and a new website were also developed in time for the conference.

The number of qualified candidates who applied to the program tripled from previous years and, according to the division administrator, the quality of candidates improved tremendously after VisionPoint Marketing’s re-launch of the program. In fact, this was the first year that Duke’s most desired, most qualified candidates also chose Duke as a match for their school of choice.

Potential residents truly understood and appreciated the value of Duke’s new family medicine residency program, which has gone from a program on the verge of being non-existent to one that is raising the bar within the health care community.