Best of CASE District VI Award
 

Institution: Kansas State University

Title of entry: From research to reality: A closer look at vaccine development

About this entry: Vaccines save lives, for both humans and animals. That's an important story to tell.

Our collaborative team created the story package "From research to reality: A closer look at vaccine development" to show how Kansas State University is involved in vaccine research that is safe, effective and necessary for human health and animal health.

This story package was one of the feature stories for our fall 2022 issue of Seek magazine. Seek is K-State's flagship research magazine and highlights university research, scholarly activities and discoveries. Seek combines written content with creative photography and innovative design to tell the stories of university researchers. Each issue includes a printed magazine and a website with multimedia content at k-state.edu/seek.

This story package covered an especially important and timely topic. In recent years, and especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines have become surrounded by myths and misinformation. Our storytelling aims to dispel myths, correct fallacies and show the process that makes sure vaccines are safe and effective.

We used multiple strategies to share that message: a long-form feature story; laboratory photos; an engaging infographic that shows the step-by-step vaccine development process; videos and online content; and social media posts.

The numbers show that readers engaged with this piece of storytelling. Seek's printed magazine, website, videos and social media for the fall 2022 issue reached a combined total of more than 400,000 people. Most impressively, social media posts related to this vaccine story package reached more than 27,000 users on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.