Leslie Cao — healthcare communications, China

Leslie Cao
  • Logic
  • Evidence
  • Structure
  • Language
  • Insight
  • Empathy

From reason to the reader

Clear thinking Effective communication

Healthcare communication / PR campaigns
2020 — 2026China / Remote
Impressions 1.67 bn From one awareness week — figure published by the awarding jury, not by the agency
Coverage 6,700+ Pieces from that same week, led by the two most senior national outlets on the same day
Social No. 1 Weibo hot search, with 750+ government health accounts carrying the story onward
Footprint 47 cities In a single nationwide rollout, from first-tier down to community clinics

01Recognition

Six awards across four campaigns

Two campaigns account for five of them. Figures quoted anywhere on this page come from a closing report or an awarding body's own published case file.

Gold ×2
2023 International Shingles Awareness Week
Golden Flag Awards — Pharmaceutical Industry Case & Marketing PR · GSK · Adult vaccines
2023
Gold ×2
“Protect Your Stomach Early” — World Stomach Day
Golden Flag Awards — Pharmaceutical Industry Case & Public Welfare Communication · Bayer · Consumer health
2023
Bronze
“Protect Your Stomach Early” — World Stomach Day
19th China Best Public Relations Case Awards — Healthcare Communication · Bayer
2023
Annual
525 International Skin Day campaign
Southern Weekly — Outstanding Responsibility Communication of the Year · GSK
2023
Winner
2024 International Shingles Awareness Week
Golden Flag Awards · GSK · Adult vaccines
2024

02Selected work

Nine campaigns — three in full, six in brief

Most health campaigns report reach. These three claims are what the work below is actually for, and each one has a campaign underneath it.

It changed policy

Two CPPCC members filed new proposals after a campaign built to reach them — one on HPV vaccination, one on provincial pilot programmes.

WHO co-hosted it

The WHO Representative Office in China co-hosted a national broadcast, with two of its immunization officers on camera.

The thinking compounded

An argument built in 2024 became a named framework in 2025 and carried three campaigns through 2026. A category coined in May 2022 was owned by August.

Three in full

The campaigns those claims rest on

Feb–Mar · Shingles Awareness Week GSK
Adult vaccines · 2023
Double gold

A disease week the country started observing on its own

Second year of a week that did not exist in China before the brand created it. Three parts: a media salon for depth, a national press conference to create the topic, then city interviews pushing down into communities — experts across general practice, dermatology, anaesthesiology, pain management, CDC and community health.

6,700+Pieces of coverage
1.67 bnImpressions
No. 1Weibo hot search
19TV stations
750+Gov't accounts

Why it worked: cities began interviewing their own local experts unprompted. It stopped being something pushed out and became something the health system observed.

Mar 4 · HPV Day × Two Sessions GSK
HPV vaccines · 2021
Policy outcome

The campaign that ended in two legislative proposals

International HPV Awareness Day fell during the National Two Sessions. A salon livestreamed by the People's CPPCC Daily — one of the few titles physically present in delegates' hotels — paired gynaecologists who were themselves CPPCC members with female delegates.

4,815Pieces of coverage
300 m+Reach
No. 10Weibo hot search
2CPPCC proposals filed

Why it worked: communications that reach delegates is common. Communications that changes what they submit is not.

Apr 24–30 · World Immunization Week GSK
HPV vaccines · 2021
WHO co-host

Co-hosted with the WHO Representative Office in China

WHO's global theme was “Vaccines Bring Us Closer”; localising it exactly is what made co-hosting possible. A broadcast conversation co-hosted by the WHO China office and Health News, with two Expanded Programme on Immunization officers on camera beside a leading public health professor.

4Simultaneous platforms
3National channels
2WHO officers on camera

Why it worked: the client's name appears nowhere in the host credits. Stepping fully behind an international organisation is what bought the platform.

Six in brief

Range — scale, launches, and work with no coverage at all

2022

Gastric health, argued rather than explained

A technical concept nobody searches for, on a day nobody observes — translated into propositions people already had opinions about, then detonated across four tracks on one date.

3,426 pieces · 954 m reach · two hot searches · 18 TV channels

Bayer
Consumer health
Three awards
2022

Thirty-four cities, twenty-one provinces, one release date

One city package templated rather than designed each time: a dermatologist for severity, a community physician for where to go, and a fixed four-channel media mix in every city.

34 cities · 198 originals · 1,215 pick-ups · 231 m impressions

GSK
Adult vaccines
2020

An industry platform built to move policy, not sell product

Positioned as an academic platform rather than a corporate event — trading visibility for calibre. Its durable output was a written initiative from the expert committee, citable by policymakers.

2,083 pieces · 500 m+ reads · 22 global speakers · 16,000+ HCPs online

Sanofi Pasteur
Vaccines
2022

Borrowing the Winter Olympics to talk about cervical cancer

A crossover dialogue between two clinical professors and a former Olympic figure-skating medallist, who said unprompted that she would have her daughter vaccinated.

841 m impressions · 3 hot-search hashtags · 7.14 m livestream views

GSK
HPV vaccines
2021–24

A repeatable method for launching an innovative drug

Split one approval into three news moments — approval, launch, first prescription — so the last proves patients are actually being treated. Replace adjectives with checkable facts.

5 launches, five companies · 2 hrs from customs to patient

Pfizer · Sanofi
Innovent · Ascentage
Zai Lab
2024

An exhibition for employees, about stigma

No media outreach at all. A foreword that conceded researchers once expected HIV to be controlled quickly and were wrong — then closed on something a visitor could do.

Internal audience · built from public submissions

Gilead Sciences
HIV

Two frameworks

Arguments built deliberately across several years

“Three highs plus shingles” — a comorbidity frame for an older audience

Narrowing the audience from everyone over 50 to the far more motivated group already managing a chronic condition.

NOV 2024Diabetes Day: one comorbidity argued — diabetes raises shingles risk
NOV 2025Named at the CIIE — three highs plus shingles
MAR 2026Action Month owned media, told as a personified prescription
JUL 2026World Cup — the frame mapped onto attack and defence
SEP 2026World Heart Day × travel, into age-friendly tourism policy

“Scientific hair care” — building a category on a borrowed day

Skin Care Day belongs to cosmetics brands. Arguing that the scalp is skin carved out space on it — then the line took a day of its own.

MAY 2022Concept coined: scalp established as skin that grows hair
JUL 2022CCTV interview — a single top-tier channel, for depth
AUG 20228·18 Hair Care Day, fronted by the society that founded it

From the field

Shot on site, or lifted from the closing reports

An empty press conference table at People's Daily, five name cards set out in front of a campaign backdrop, with a broadcast camera on the right.
Jan 2021 · People's Daily Fifteen minutes out. Five name cards — the panel is the strategy.
Four women in conversation on white armchairs in front of a pink backdrop carrying a figure-skater silhouette and the campaign title.
Jan 2022 · Olympics crossover Two professors and China's first world figure-skating champion, on air.
An empty television studio: a rig of about a dozen film lights overhead, four white armchairs facing a pink three-panel backdrop.
Jan 2022 · Four hours earlier Twelve lamps for a forty-minute conversation. Mostly, this is the job.
A speaker at a podium in front of a very wide curved LED wall reading, in Chinese, the best strategy for cervical cancer prevention.
Nov 2021 · Import Expo A company stand at a state trade expo, running its own prevention programme.
A temperature-controlled pharmaceutical dispatch bay: warehouse staff in high-visibility vests packing boxes while three photographers film them.
Dec 2021 · Cold-chain bay Three cameras on one taping-up gesture — approval made visible.
A full conference hall under stage lighting, facing a wide red backdrop listing dozens of partner organisation logos.
Jul 2021 · Rare disease, pro bono Roughly forty-eight partners under one patient-organisation banner.
A CCTV-13 news broadcast: an anchor beside a graphic reading International Skin Day, with a lower-third headline about rational skincare.
May 2022 · CCTV-13 Five items across two days, sequenced so CCTV's own accounts carried it on.
A television news frame showing a packed ballroom and a blue stage screen, with a lower-third reading that a urological oncology summit opened in Chengdu.
May 2021 · Regional TV A launch reported as a congress. The client is not named. That was the point.

03Scope

What the work covers

Multinational pharmaceutical companies, Chinese biotech and medical-device firms, 2020 – 2026. Client names on request.

Campaign types

Awareness-day programmes · multi-city interview rollouts · product launches and first-prescription milestones · expo and summit platforms · expert panels and media salons · livestream production · owned media · internal communications.

Channels worked

CCTV and provincial broadcast · People's Daily Health, Xinhua, China News Service · Weibo hot search · Douyin and WeChat Channels · lifestyle and business press · trade and clinical media · government accounts.

Also

Bilingual working materials · expert briefing books and verbatim transcripts · hospital-side clearance management · medical and compliance review cycles · budgeting, quotation and settlement.

About

About

I plan and run health communications campaigns in China for multinational pharmaceutical and medical-device companies — awareness-day programmes, multi-city media work, product launches, and the frameworks that hold them together across years.

Most of it is the unglamorous kind: recruiting local specialists city by city, briefing journalists before there is anything to file, building a media network in one year that is still standing in the next.

Contact

Contact

caolinying1900@gmail.com

Available for selected projects. China / Remote.