Kirsten Bruce

Kirsten Bruce is founder, Principal and owner of the award-winning health + wellness PR agency, VIVA! Communications voted Australia’s ‘Best Small Consultancy of the Year’ in November 2017 by the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA).

She is Asia-Pacific (APAC) Director of GLOBALHealthPR™ – the largest independent health and science communications agency partnership worldwide.

Kirsten is a member of the advisory council of the InsideOut Institute – Australia’s first institute for research and clinical excellence in eating disorders that aims to provide every Australian living with an eating disorder, access to the best possible care, by re-thinking eating disorders from the “inside out”.

Kirsten has more than 23 years of health + wellness communications experience. Throughout her professional career she has held senior roles in international, regional and local PR agencies, as well as in-house communication roles.

She has teamed extensively with professional and patient advocacy bodies to coordinate strategic, fully integrated, multi-stakeholder, healthcare professional and public health campaigns. She has assisted small patient support groups to secure fully subsidised Federal Government access to therapies for ultra-rare, life-threatening diseases on both the Life Saving Drugs Program (LSDP) and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).

Kirsten has vast communications experience in many therapeutic areas, including eating disorders, mental health, women’s health, men’s health, addiction, dermatology, endocrinology, obesity, diabetes, oncology, neurology, rare diseases, pain management, infectious diseases, vaccines, gastroenterology and complementary medicines.

She specialises in product and medical device launches and ongoing promotions, corporate and stakeholder relations, clinical trial recruitment, issues and crisis management, brand strategy and development, events management, Advisory Board coordination, media training and media relations, media briefings and seminars, media monitoring, reporting and analysis, broadcast health production and post-production, development of digital and social media content, and multimedia/digital solutions, including web development, documentaries, animations and infographics.

Kirsten has a Bachelor of Arts (BA) majoring in Communications (PR and Journalism) and a Master of Arts (MA) majoring in International Relations and Japanese. She is a Fellow of the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA), and a Member of the PRIA Registered Consultancies Group (MRCG).