“Show Me State” Shows A Lot of CFS Info

CFS had a lot to show for itself with an explosion of coverage, particularly in broadcast outlets, in the St. Louis area before, during and after the display of The Faces of CFS traveling photo exhibit at St. Louis Mills, April 23-26.

Eight newspapers in Illinois and Missouri included information about the exhibit ranging from brief mentions in events calendars to features in “Edge,” the entertainment section of The Edwardsville Intelligencer on March 26, and “Out of isolation,” published in The Telegraph on April 21.

Six websites contained online calendar listings, while local news site St. Louis Front Page provided a front-page link to a short story, complete with a full-color photo of the exhibit at the mall.

CFS garnered outstanding radio coverage in this market, with almost a full month of coverage beginning March 28. Several stations ran simple public service announcements about Faces, while six others hosted Association executives, CFS patients and a health care professional as guests on talk shows. Unfortunately, none of these interviews are archived on the stations’ websites for later listening.

The illness and the exhibit also enjoyed a tremendous TV presence, especially during the first two days of the display. Fox 2 News in the Morning (KTVI) and NewsChannel 5 @ Noon (KSDK, the local NBC affiliate) aired interviews with CFS patients and experts during their newscasts, as did morning talk show Great Day St. Louis (KMOV, the local CBS affiliate) the week prior.

Also in April, CFS got some media play that resulted from earlier outreach efforts:

• Association president and CEO Kimberly McCleary; Dr. Peter Rowe, professor of pediatrics and director of the Chronic Fatigue Center at Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore, Md.; and Reno, Nev., patient Julie Holloman were guests on a re-scheduled episode of The Exhausted Parent Network, a show airing on two radio stations in Northern California and Nevada.
• And McCleary and Dr. Suzanne D. Vernon, the Association’s scientific director, had a second discussion with Dr. Derrick DeSilva, an internist at Raritan Bay Medical Center in Perth Amboy, N.J., and national media personality, on a free, nationally broadcast conference call program, Ask Dr. DeSilva, presented by alternativehealthjournal.com. The archive is available at www.alternativehealthjournal.com/ask_an_expert/conference_call_archive. This was a follow-up to their first guest stint on the Ask Dr. DeSilva Internet radio program on March 5 (access that archived interview here.)

See all the media coverage of the photo exhibit in St. Louis and other stories about CFS from the public awareness campaign on our website.

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