CURA client, Nicole Napoli, Director of Media Relations at the American College of Cardiology (ACC), on media relations
CURA has been a proud partner of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) for nearly ten years. Throughout our partnership, our efforts have been centered around supporting their Annual Scientific Sessions, a global gathering of cardiologists where groundbreaking new science in the field is shared.
CURA works with the ACC media relations team to manage the onsite newsroom, facilitate press conferences for late-breaking clinical trials, manage reporter requests and publicize the latest studies to national media.
Meet Nicole Napoli, Director of Media Relations at ACC. As we prepare for ACC ’26, we had a chat with Nicole about ACC’s work and how she’s navigating the ever-changing media environment to maximize coverage and impact. Read on to learn best practices for landing media hits and curating stories that break through the noise.
Q: Any exciting milestones or campaigns happening at ACC this year or in the pipeline?
Nicole: Things are never boring at ACC! We’re getting ready to kick off planning for the press program at ACC.26 in New Orleans, which is the biggest cardiovascular conference in the United States. It’s a huge undertaking to plan to promote the thousands of presentations and ground-breaking cardiovascular science that is presented for the first time at our conference. We’re thrilled to once again be planning with our friends at CURA. ACC is also continuing its global reach by hosting smaller conferences in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East next year — all of which have press programs and new science presented. We’re also planning for several important guidelines to be released in 2026, including a new Cholesterol Guideline. New guidance is always hotly anticipated, so it’s going to be a busy year of news.
Q: From your perspective, what are some tips or best practices you have for maximizing impact around announcements and pitching health care media? How are these strategies evolving in a changing media landscape?
Nicole: ACC has a lot of news coming out every day when you consider our journals, registries, advocacy, health equity work, clinical documents, etc. It wouldn’t be effective to promote everything to our media contacts, but we know that media who write about cardiology are constantly looking for content. We make everything available to our regular contacts via mailings and newsletters so that they can pick and choose what’s most applicable to their audience. When we choose to do more targeted media promotions, like a press release or direct pitching, we’re choosing news coming out of ACC that not only will interest our usual contacts but will also likely get the attention of media who aren’t covering cardiology, or even health care, every day. By strategically choosing to elevate certain news coming out of the College, it automatically gives those press releases a sense of timeliness and importance. We rely on wire services a lot too because in today’s landscape, there are fewer beat reporters and more freelancers. It’s important to cast a very wide net to make sure the right people are seeing what we are putting out there.
Q: As a medical society, what stories or angles are most impactful in generating meaningful coverage?
Nicole: News and research coming out of the College that directly impacts patients’ and individuals’ everyday lives generates the most impactful news coverage. Not everything coming out of the College is easy to understand by the average person. A lot of the latest research is very technical and mostly understandable by a clinician. It’s still very important news and impacts how a clinician manages their patients’ care. However, in my experience, very clinical news makes it harder to generate meaningful coverage because the average person can’t use it to improve their heart health.
Q: How do you craft a compelling narrative that stands out in a crowded news cycle?
Nicole: It always comes back to saving lives and helping people with heart disease lead better lives. Heart disease is the number one killer of men and women around the world. If we are announcing a new program or the latest data on cardiovascular disease, we want to say, up front, how this is helping to further ACC’s mission to transform cardiovascular care and improve heart health for all. By leading with this, we are humanizing our stories. Data and quotes from experts are important, but those are details that support the importance and the validity of the news – people are what make the story.
Q: How do you measure the success or impact of your media campaigns?
Nicole: We always look at the typical markers of success in PR – how much coverage did it get, how many interviews did we set up, etc. But more importantly, we pride ourselves on not being afraid to try new things at ACC regardless of the outcome. If we have an idea to pitch to a reporter who is outside of our usual contacts or issue a press release on a topic that isn’t a typical news generator and those plans don’t work, then I’d still consider that a win because someone came up with a unique idea and went for it. In most cases, my motto is, “what do we have to lose by trying?”
Q: What trends in health care/the media landscape are you watching right now?
Nicole: Right now, we are closely watching meeting coverage patterns. In-person meetings are officially back, and virtual options are slimming way down or going away all together. Even though remote coverage from media has been around long before COVID restrictions were put in place, reporters may have started getting used to getting a full meeting experience remotely vs. just remote access. We want to encourage reporters to cover meetings in person to get a full meeting experience and true pulse of what’s going on in cardiology, but we understand the reality of rising travel costs, tighter budgets and fewer traditional beat reporters. For those who can’t travel, we want to be able to provide the best meeting experience possible, knowing that streaming sessions and virtual content is limited.