JohnstonWells.com

The Denver HALO Center, a nonprofit organization that serves at-risk youth in the local community, will no longer be associated with The HALO Foundation and will operate as a new entity known as the Heart & Hand Center for Youth and their Families.

Located in the Five Points area of Denver, the Heart & Hand Center will continue to provide warm meals, after school activities and support on week days to underprivileged Denver children, which it has done since 2008.

“As the HALO Denver Center evolved, so have the needs of the Five Points Community,” said Nikki Cady, president and founder. “We decided that our branch needed to focus our efforts at a local level and expand in order to support the families of Denver.”

More than 140,111 Coloradoans have a developmental disability. To celebrate Developmental Disability Awareness Month, The Arc of Colorado and the 11 chapters within it will hold a film festival on Tuesday, March 20 at the Denver Film Center.

“Too often people with developmental disabilities are marginalized in movies and on television,” said Marijo Rymer, Executive Director of The Arc of Colorado. “The film festival aims to raise their profile by showcasing works of all genres, featuring people who may learn, communicate, move, function and think differently.”

The film festival, which is titled “Achieve with Us,” will showcase films by and about people with developmental disabilities. This event marks the first opportunity for Coloradans to view some of the hundreds of films that feature accurate portrayals of people with developmental disabilities. The show times are at 2 p.m., 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. and will each feature seven different films that range from 2 minutes to 25 minutes.

Animal lovers everywhere can support and honor veterinary medicine by voting for one of five projects submitted in the 2011 Heska Inspiration in Action Contest.

Heska, a leading provider of veterinary diagnostic and specialty products, will award the grand prize winner $25,000 and the second place winner $5,000 to help bring inspired ideas to life (subject to official contest rules).

"Veterinarians spend countless hours working to impact the human experience through our bond with animals," said Robert Grieve, Heska's Chairman and CEO.  "Serving that bond every day creates room in the imagination to think differently about solutions to important problems that directly impact the health of both animals and humans worldwide.  Heska promotes this contest as a means to encourage innovation.  We are honored to provide this opportunity to our colleagues.”

Austin Exploration, an oil and gas exploration company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia (with a satellite office in Lakewood, Colo.) has chosen JohnstonWells Public Relations to implement an intensive public relations campaign, as it prepares to be introduced to the American oil and gas industry.

JohnstonWells will execute an all encompassing campaign that includes a corporate name change to Arapahoe Energy, a new design aesthetic and website, and media and community relations.

ValveXchange, Inc. has performed successful First In Man (FIM) surgeries demonstrating the practicality and advantages of its novel Vitality™ two-part heart valve system.

“With other valves if you break a suture you’re basically committed to taking the valve off and out. Here there are no leaflets, so it’s very easy to see and put in extra sutures.”

The surgeries were performed by two highly renowned U.S. cardiac surgeons, Lars Svensson, MD, PhD of The Cleveland Clinic and W. Randolph Chitwood, MD of The East Carolina Heart Institute, working with Adrian Ebner, MD at his facilities in Asuncion, Paraguay. The surgeries took place Sept. 26 and 27, 2011. Three men aged 49, 62 and 72 received the Vitality™ heart valves. All have been discharged and are recovering normally.

LUNGevity Foundation, the nation’s largest lung cancer non-profit, has teamed up with JohnstonWells to hold the first annual Breathe Deep Denver 5K run/walk at INVESCO Field at Mile High on November 5, 2011.

The event – part of the organization’s nationwide effort to raise funds for lung cancer research – will kick off with a yoga warm-up led by Sarah Russell, owner of Breathe Yoga & Cycling Studio, and a performance from the Breathe Deep Tuba Chorus, sponsored by the Downtown Denver Partnership and directed by Bill Clark, who is also the director of the Queen City Jazz Band.

Ernst & Young LLP is pleased to announce the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year^® Mountain Desert Award winners. This group of leading entrepreneurs was selected by an independent judging panel made up of previous winners of the award, leading CEOs, private capital investors and other regional business leaders. The winners were revealed at a gala event on June 16, 2011 at the Seawell Ballroom in the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.

AORN Works, a subsidiary of the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), just announced that its market research and surgical insights division will lead the strategic priorities of its business.

On behalf of clients, market research/surgical insights measure the attitudes of perioperative professionals who are the end users of medical products and services.

The new strategy results from its niche ability to provide exceptional market intelligence to medical device manufacturers and service providers that sell to operating rooms throughout the United States.

Did you see a bridge being driven down Colfax last weekend? It was part of our client, Corporex's Fitzsimons Village project.

Corporex, developer of Fitzsimons Village, set a public pedestrian footbridge over East Colfax Ave. near Xanadu St. in Aurora.

JCF Bridge Company, headquartered in Driftwood, TX, built the 163-foot steel truss structure that will connect the Anschutz Medical Campus to Fitzsimons Village.  The bridge will provide safe and easy access to the new Fitzsimons 100 office building, more amenities including a bank, restaurants and shops and a 153-room Marriott Springhill Suites Hotel that will open soon.

Our latest client is well on the way to changing the electric car industry, one plug at a time.

JohnstonWells has recently been hired by Evatran™ to manage media relations, as the company plans to unveil its Plugless Power charging system in 2011. 

Plugless Power is the world’s first charging system that allows electric vehicles to refuel without a cord and plug or any driver interaction. The technology is based on inductive power transfer that has been used in electrical transformers for more than a century.