Two of Texas’s powerhouse healthcare systems leapt to the leading edge of America’s healthcare transformation with a merger in 2014 to become Baylor Scott & White Health. Their 2015 Report to the Community was conceived to highlight the benefits of the merger and showcase the system’s forward-thinking population health strategies while emphasizing the warm, human touch that has been maintained for more than a century of care.

The client set out to create a showpiece for Baylor Scott & White Health with the Report to the Community. To accommodate the challenges of evolving topic sections and copy, designer/art director Gretchen Hicks established a flexible page layout. Stories and images of patients from newborns to elder adults illuminated the report theme, “Changing Health Care For Life.”

Wrapped in a dark blue metallic cover with silver metallic embossed type, the report makes a big impact from the beginning. Translucent, metallic flysheets were used to add soft elegance and stress words representing the client’s core values. The custom photos of patients and staff members were shot with softening filters to balance the report’s crisp data infographics and the strong color palette of the brand. Photographing real staff and patients in busy clinical settings is never easy. For one image, both photographer and art director had to be on call for an actual heart transplant; they captured the living donor heart being handed off in mid-surgery. Other images required multiple setups to capture the spirit of the interaction between patients and healthcare teams.

The report was highly acclaimed by the client’s leadership team and was described as “fresh and different from anything they had done before.” The report was distributed to stakeholders, community leaders, and staff.