• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, July 17, 2025

Among those folks who want to leave the U.S. right now, you can probably count healthcare workers.

And faced with a shortage of doctors, nurses and other health professionals in British Columbia, the Canadian province has swooped into the nearby states of Washington, Oregon and California with a marketing campaign designed to recruit dissatisfied doctors and nurses to come north.

Stressed-out U.S. healthcare workers, likely exacerbated by hurdles in providing care under the current Trump administration, have been responding. At last count, since British Columbia announced its recruitment initiative in March, 795 doctors and 756 nurses have expressed interest in moving to the province, Dentsu’s performance marketing agency iProspect tells Pharma & Health Insider.

Paid ad content, created with Vancouver’s Here Be Monsters agency, launched June 2 with the tagline, “Follow Your Heart to BC,” and runs through this coming Sunday.

Another key line in much of the advertising touts a key appeal of the Canadian system to U.S. docs and nurses: “universal health care,” which provides a nice antidote to the high costs and insurance busy work that cause headaches south of the border.

“Uncertainty is high in the U.S., upsetting many people, especially healthcare professionals. They’re reasoning with themselves to stay in a bad situation, hoping things will turn around,” Matt Bielby, creative director and partner at Here Be Monsters, says in a statement. “More and more healthcare professionals feel like their values don’t align with where they live and work, and it’s time for change…We’re asking people to listen to their hearts so that they can practice their old job in a new home.”

“Recently, the BC government saw an increase in interest from American healthcare workers wishing to come to Canada,” Caroline Umeokeoma, iProspect account director, to Pharma & Health Insider

The target audience includes both Canadians working in the U.S., and U.S. citizens looking to change locales.

The goal requires more than just an ad campaign, though. To that end, the BC College of Nurses and Midwives recently expedited its registration process for U.S.-trained nurses, the province’s College of Physicians and Surgeons is working on a similar move, and the province itself is working with the federal government on the immigration front.

iProspect is also working with Health Match BC, an employment agency that’s spotlighting job opportunities for doctors in such high-need areas as cancer care, emergency departments, and rural and remote communities.

The ad campaign itself has used geo-targeted media “to meet healthcare workers where they are — geographically and emotionally,” Umeokeoma says.

In locales across Washington, Oregon and five cities in California Cities (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento), programmatic digital out-of-home (OOH) has used data from healthcare workers’ mobile phones to target them near healthcare facilities on digital billboards, urban panels and screens in restaurants and grocery stores.

Site-specific static and digital OOH has been running within within two miles of major healthcare facilities, such as the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, UCLA Health and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and UCSF Health in San Franciso.

In total, some 14,000 digital screens have been used. With the campaign also running paid ads on audio, social, search media, and even print (medical trades including American Family Physician, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association and Medical Economics).

Activations during the campaign have included a branded coffee truck at Seattle hospitals, which offered complimentary coffee to workers during their shift changes.

“We don’t often see Canadian public sector campaigns extend across the border with this level of strategic and emotional intent,” says Umeokeoma. “By combining geo-targeted media with bold, resonant creatives, the government of British Columbia has taken a fresh approach to public sector marketing that proves meaningful connection can drive real-world impact.”