A Hospital That Belongs to Its Community Has to Earn That

On Ramp’s work with Michael Garron Hospital Foundation

A hospital can serve a neighbourhood for decades without ever truly belonging to it. Building that connection takes time, intention, and a willingness to tell honest stories about what care actually looks like.

That kind of connection matters. When communities understand and trust their local hospital, they engage with it differently. They advocate for it. They support it. They feel a stake in its future. For a hospital like Michael Garron, which serves one of Toronto’s most diverse and rapidly growing communities in the east end, that relationship is everything.

We believe everyone deserves access to the resources and support needed to live healthy lives. That belief shapes who we work with. It also, in the case of MGHF, shapes how we showed up to the work. Michael Garron is our local hospital. People on our team have given birth there, used the emergency department, and relied on its care across the years. This was not an arm’s length client relationship. It was personal.

Following the success of the Heart of the East campaign, Michael Garron Hospital Foundation came to Ramp to keep building on that momentum. The challenge was specific: how do you deepen community connection without repeating yourself? How do you evolve a story that is already working?

The answer was to develop two campaign phases that each did something distinct. The first, This is Our Hospital, made the hospital’s impact visible and immediate through real staff, real innovations, and real stories of care. A digital-led video series ran across social channels and drove people to in-depth storytelling on the hospital’s website. The campaign reached 1.1 million people and significantly outperformed projections. The second phase, We Get Better Together, widened the frame, shifting the story toward how that care actually happens: the teams, the coordination, the shared effort behind every good outcome. It ran across social and out-of-home placements, bringing the story into the community’s physical spaces.

What the two phases built together was more valuable than either could have achieved alone. A clearer, more complete picture of an institution that belongs to the people it serves.

The MGHF partnership is one of the health and wellbeing relationships featured in Ramp’s 2025 Impact Report.

Read the full case study or explore the 2025 Impact Report to see more of the work.