The Office of Communications and Marketing at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center earned three awards, including a first-place honor and a Best in Show nomination, at the 2025 Tennessee College Public Relations Association (TCPRA) conference.
Held May 21–23 in Chattanooga, the annual event brought together communications professionals from public and private colleges and universities across the state. This year’s competition received a record-breaking 421 entries across 38 categories from 22 institutions.
UT Health Science Center’s communications team took home a gold award and Best in Show nomination for media relations, a silver award for feature writing, and a bronze award in the printed reports category. These honors recognize the Office of Communications and Marketing’s efforts to advance the university’s missions and vision for a healthier Tennessee by raising awareness of its clinical excellence, medical innovations, faculty expertise, and overall credibility in academic health care and research.
“Our communications team makes us very proud,” Chancellor Peter Buckley, MD, said. “Their successes are important as an independent affirmation of the quality and the statewide impact of their work, as they continuously tell powerful stories that exemplify our vision of Healthy Tennesseans. Thriving Communities.”
The gold award in the media relations campaign category and the Best in Show nomination honored the communications team’s work, led by Strategic Communications Specialist Chris Green, to promote a groundbreaking surgery performed by UT Health Science Center surgeons. The Jaw in a Day operation – the first in Tennessee and the Mid-South – was completed last year at Methodist University Hospital by an interdisciplinary team from the College of Medicine and the College of Dentistry. In a single procedure, facial plastic surgeons, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, and head and neck surgical oncologists removed an advanced tumor from the face of a teenage patient and fully reconstructed the jaw using bone from the patient’s leg, eliminating the need for multiple surgeries over the course of months or years.
Green and Strategic Communications Manager Peggy Reisser partnered with the public relations team at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare to coordinate coverage of the Jaw in a Day operation. As a result of months of collaborative planning and execution, more than 100 media outlets reported on the case, reaching a combined audience of more than 21 million. The Commercial Appeal ran a story – featuring interviews and photos of the patient, the patient’s mother, and the surgeons – on the front page of its paper and at the top of its website. Additionally, Our Tennessee, the UT System’s alumni magazine, published a story about the case written by Green.
Reisser, who serves on the TCPRA Executive Committee as vice president, received a silver award in the feature writing category for her story Championing Children’s Health, published in the winter 2025 issue of Our Tennessee. The story details how Terri Finkel, MD, PhD, interim chair of the Department of Pediatrics and pediatrician-in-chief at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, successfully advocated for a new state law requiring TennCare to cover rapid whole genome sequencing for newborns and children showing signs of rare genetic diseases. As Reisser’s story explains, the law enables faster, more cost-effective diagnoses, allowing for earlier treatment that can save lives.
The university’s 2023-24 Annual Report earned a bronze award in the printed reports category. The report’s content was produced by the communications team of Reisser, Green, and former Strategic Communications Specialist Janay Jeans. Adam Gaines, creative services manager, designed the report, and Caleb Jia provided photography. The Annual Report highlighted the many ways UT Health Science Center faculty, staff, and students worked to advance the university’s vision through academics, clinical care, research, community outreach, and philanthropy.
The awards were judged by 13 marketing, public relations, communications, and media professionals, representing academic institutions, PR agencies, media organizations, and health care communications departments.
In addition to the awards ceremony, the TCPRA conference featured several presentations, including one by Jessi Gold, MD, chief wellness officer for the UT System and associate professor of psychiatry at UT Health Science Center. Dr. Gold discussed the importance of recognizing and addressing student mental health and wellness in higher education communications.