StepOne, a nation-wide network of volunteer healthcare professionals using telemedicine to fight COVID-19, has assigned its PR and media communications business to healthcare communications advisory agency Teamwork Communication Group. The agency has taken up this mandate on a pro bono basis.

StepOne is a collective of technologists and volunteer doctors who aim to leverage telemedicine in a bid to help governments manage the COVID-19 crisis better. StepOne’s teleconsultation helplines, available in multiple languages, are powered by thousands of volunteer doctors across the country. The service is live in 15 states.

As a media and communications partner, Teamwork will be responsible for delivering end-to-end communications and outreach solutions for StepOne ranging from strategising, planning and conducting campaigns, hosting media relations events, facilitating media interactions to advocacy and crisis management solutions. The mandate will be managed by Teamwork’s Delhi office.

Nikky Gupta, Co-Founder and Director, Teamwork Communication Group, said, “By joining forces with StepOne, we wish to contribute our bit at a time when humanity is facing one of the worst health crises. With our deep and longstanding experience in healthcare communication as well as country-wide connect in terms of both mainstream and regional media we are confident of delivering the best communication experience for StepOne. As a healthcare specialist PR agency, we have been at the forefront, devising COVID-19 related communication strategies for a series of our partners. I hope our active media outreach will enable StepOne to expand its reach and influence effectively faster.”

Added Raghvendra Prasad, Co-Founder, Project StepOne, “We are thankful to Teamwork for volunteering as a communications advisor for our initiative. At StepOne, our endeavour is to enable people seek medical consultation, free of cost, from the safety of their homes, ensure critical health issues are not neglected as also to enable faster diagnosis of COVID-19 through our scalable helplines available in different regional languages. It is absolutely important for our initiative that the right messaging and communication comes out of StepOne. And to that end, we believe Teamwork is best suited to handle this responsibility. With their deep reservoir of communications experience and large media network across offline and online platforms, I am certain that we will achieve a productive communication strategy, generate awareness around our initiative and strengthen the fight against COVID-19 by enabling more people get access to adequate consultation while creating path-breaking thought leadership in this field.”