Potomac Health Associates, Inc. announced that its client, The PlowShare Group, was awarded a five-year, $313 million contract with the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) to continue an award-winning national anti-tobacco campaign.
Following its initial three-year contract award to the The PlowShare Group in late 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched its first-ever paid national tobacco education campaign—Tips From Former Smokers (Tips) in March 2012. The Tips campaign, which profiles real people—not actors—who are living with serious long-term health effects from smoking and secondhand smoke exposure, is now being continued by The PlowShare Group with this most recent five-year contract award. Since its launch, the Tips campaign has featured compelling stories of former smokers living with smoking-related diseases and disabilities and the toll that smoking-related illnesses have taken on them. The campaign has also featured nonsmokers who have experienced life-threatening episodes as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke.
The PlowShare Group first retained PHA in 2011 to provide support in conjunction with its technical proposal in response to CDC’s first national anti-smoking campaign targeting adults. PHA identified potential deficiencies in initial drafts of technical proposal responses, and made extensive recommendations to eliminate weaknesses and inconsistencies, clarify elements of ambiguity and enhance the overall score of all evaluation factors and subfactors. The PlowShare Group was awarded this three-year, fixed price contract. Initially valued at approximately $150 million at the time of award, the total contract spend was approximately $215 million by the conclusion final option period.
In 2015, CDC changed from a firm fixed-price (FFP) to a cost-plus fixed fee (CPFF)-type contract in 2015. For this most recent engagement, in addition to advising The PlowShare Group about elements of its technical proposal, through its subcontractor, PHA also provided financial and accounting support to satisfy requirements of cost contracts under the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), including compliance with Cost Accounting Standards (CAS).
About The Plowshare Group
The PlowShare Group is the second largest producer and distributor of social issue communication campaigns in the nation. PlowShare’s core services include public service strategic media distribution; media outreach; media planning and buying; and state-of-the art media usage tracking and evaluation. The PlowShare Group, manages the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) national tobacco education campaign, Tips From Former Smokers (Tips) tobacco counter-marketing team. Earlier this year, the campaign was awarded its third American Marketing Association (AMA) EFFIE award, winning a Silver Award in the Disease Awareness and Education: Advocacy category. An EFFIE is one of the most coveted awards in the marketing and communications business, acknowledging proven effectiveness of effort. This is the third consecutive EFFIE win for CDC’s Tips campaign, which initially launched in 2012. The campaign took Gold in 2013 and Bronze in 2014.
About Potomac Health Associates, Inc.
Potomac Health Associates, Inc. is a professional services firm that specializes in federal health care contracting and business development for commercial and government clients. Since its inception, the firm has helped its clients win in excess of $500 million in competitive awards from the VA, and $4.5 billion in competitive and non-competitive federal contract awards from all federal agencies.