HJCL clients include major commercial companies, as well as patient and voluntary healthcare organisations, professional bodies and communications consultancies. The services we provide range from political lobbying and strategic communications advice, to NICE project management and campaigning.

Click on any of the buttons below for details of the services we offer, or take a look at our Case Studies to see some examples of projects we’ve undertaken.

Communications programmes and campaigns

Helping you to make your case

Market access

Understanding policy and legislation

Events

Contact-Building Programmes

Training sessions and seminars

Project Management

Political monitoring and horizon scanning

Measurement and Evaluation

Whether you want to lobby the Department of Health, the Scottish Executive or NICE about a specific cause or issue, launch a campaign or simply develop your corporate profile with policy-makers and parliamentarians over the longer-term, we can design, develop and assist in the implementation of a comprehensive campaign strategy and tactical action plan designed to deliver your organisational aims and objectives.

We can draft, write and produce a wide range of materials and copy designed to convey your messages or cause succinctly and effectively to the people who matter – from simple briefing papers on a specific issue, parliamentary questions and motions, to detailed submissions of evidence to select committees and formal responses to consultation documents.

Headlines like “NHS to scrap provision of drugs for Alzheimer’s sufferers” are becoming more and more common, so understanding how the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) operate, how they make their decisions and how manufacturers, patient organisations and professionals can engage with the process and feed into recommendations, has become an imperative for many of our clients.
HJCL has gained extensive experience of ‘market access’ policies and processes by project managing our clients’ engagement through every step of the NICE Technology Appraisal, Clinical Guideline and SMC assessment. Whether it has been engaging with NICE and the Department of Health at the pre-referral stage, developing the submission, responding to NICE’s draft recommendations or appealing Final Recommendations, HJCL is uniquely placed to help you through the complex maze of timings and processes. In addition, we can help develop supporting market access communications programmes.

To many, the machinations of parliament and the law are a complete mystery. With considerable practical experience of both, we have the expertise to cut through the trees so that you can see the wood! We have the technical legal expertise to undertake a detailed analysis of proposed policy, government and secondary legislation, advising you in plain English of the likely impact on, as well as the opportunities for, your business.

Parliamentary briefings, receptions, meetings and policy seminars can play an invaluable role in communicating your key messages and arguments to a wide audience of interested stakeholders – whether as individual standalone projects or as a key component of a comprehensive public affairs strategy or campaign. We have considerable experience of designing, planning, project managing and executing events targeted at political and broader audiences – catering from 10 to 200 people.

We can design contact-building programmes for your organisation, advising which government departments, agencies, policy-makers and parliamentarians you should talk to and why, how to make a successful approach and how to communicate your cause or position to best effect, both verbally and in writing.

What is public affairs? How will the latest round of NHS reforms affect us? How does legislation get passed? How can we appeal against this decision? We can – and do – design and execute bespoke workshops, presentations and practical training sessions for senior executives, PR teams, marketing functions and key opinion-leaders on all of these topics and more…

Successful projects don’t happen by accident. Each new project presents its own challenges – whether it be size, technical complexity, timescale, degree of risk or all four. And that’s before you even start accounting for the people involved! We have been appointed by several organisations in the commercial and voluntary sectors to manage a variety of projects, lasting from 4 weeks to 18 months. One of our specialisms, however, is in managing the very complex process of a NICE Technology Appraisal.
To date, we have worked in a project management capacity with four different pharmaceutical companies on more than 15 NICE appraisals, 20 sets of NICE clinical guidelines and 20 SMC reviews. Typically, the project might involve implementing the overall submission strategy, managing communications with other stakeholders (patient and professional groups, other manufacturers, appraisal committees, NICE and the SMC), putting in place the appropriate project team, and overseeing the writing of the initial submission dossier and subsequent response documents.

Keeping up-to-date on legal and political developments is essential if you are to have any hope of influencing or shaping the development of policy in the future. We can offer a tailored political monitoring service, covering parliamentary and government announcements, debates, questions, new legislation and major policy developments relevant to your industry sector and/or specific organisational interests. If required, the service can be extended to include judicial decisions, legal case law and national media coverage.

Results count! We will work with you to agree a range of metrics which can be monitored and measured, enabling you to evaluate the success and effectiveness of the public affairs activities and campaigns which you undertake, as well as their impact on your bottom line and corporate reputation.