The organization that I will be designing a newsletter for is called the Providence Brain Institute. It is part of a larger, not-for-profit health care system called the Providence Medical Foundations that serves the state of Oregon. The Brain Institute provides treatments and surgery for patients with diseases or injuries of the brain or spine. They also perform research in order to advance treatment methods, as well as technology.
I picked this non-profit group because it addresses the brain, which is incredibly interesting to me. I want to study the brain, and apply my education to either psychology or medicine. This particular foundation stood out because it is a nonprofit treatment center, as well as research organization.
For the newsletter, the potential audience will be researchers in the field, doctors that specialize in the brain and could use the research and technology of the foundation. Also, any patients or family of people with brain diseases or injuries may also read the newsletter. Another potential audience are potential donors and contributors to the foundation, as it is not-for-profit and relies on donations. Because of the broad range of the potential audiences, the demographic is likely to be just as broad, from young, poor children, to rich, older professionals, and everything in between, including the sick. I will be writing to the patients, their families, and possible contributors.
The aesthetic of the organization is informative and polite, and definitely professional. They currently have several e-newsletters. One is the Health and Fitness, which provides information about classes and seminars. Another is the Wellness Watch, which contains articles written by Providence physicians on various ways of staying healthy. However, these are both newsletters that cover the whole foundation, rather than just the Brain Institute. The colors they have on their website are bright and clean, and the images sometimes look bright and original, like they’re from a magazine.
An idea for an article that I have is something on the information in my second blog post, on Parkinson’s research and the future of developing treatments. It will include information on the current treatments, as well as possible advancements that experts are hoping to make. This kind of article will show the kind of work that the Brain Institute is doing, which will encourage people to support it. However, it will also provide good information for the patients and their families, as it is hopeful and about better treatment possibilities. Another idea I have is for “brain food”, as just a small article on foods and exercises to do to maintain or increase brain health. It would be a fun way for the audience to see the little things they can do to keep their brain healthy.
The only questions that I have is should this newsletter focus on one “brain” aspect, or on various topics? It could be like a brain cancer issue, or a disease issue. Perhaps it could include a variety of information on different brain diseases, research, treatments, and injuries. Any ideas for articles would be great.
There is a lot of research being done on neural networks. I stumbled across several articles related to neural networks while searching for articles for the BizBuzz assignment.
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