Leris Bernard, founder of LERIS Media, a Black and women-owned, public relations and digital marketing firm, is celebrating having won the PRNEWS CSR & Diversity Award and also having been named to Agency Elite Top 100. Her company created the Epilepsy Foundation’s first full campaigns addressing epilepsy in Native American communities in recognition of National Epilepsy Awareness Month to run every November for the past two years.
“These campaigns are important to LERIS Media because we are committed to ensuring that health prevention messages effectively reach multicultural communities; it is a matter of life and death,” says Leris. “African Americans and Native Americans suffer from the same health inequities and are disproportionately affected by many of the same illnesses. Culturally, we share a similar distrust of the US healthcare system. It takes an extra effort. A nuanced and culturally astute strategy for the messages to breakthrough.”
The campaigns spoke to Native Americans in both English and Tribal languages. The images used were Native American and, most importantly, the media outlets were Native American. The total views of the campaign through newspaper, radio, PSAs, and social media were 1,665,000 throughout the southwest and great plains of America. Currently, the total population of Native Americans is an estimated 9.7 million people.
