Diversity, equity, and inclusion: Putting words into action - Med Ad News

During my time at Calcium+Company, I served as the DEI Lead.

The agency was asked to contribute to the December 2022 issue of the Med Ad News digital magazine. Leaders in DEI healthcare communications were asked, What is your organization doing to ensure that diversity, equity, and inclusion continues to be a prominent part of the conversation, having actionable impact and results?

Below is my response.
The original article can be found here.

We understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion go beyond evergreen programs and must be embedded into the fabric of our culture. As an agency of healthcare communications, our account, creatives, and strategists must view marketing from a DEI-centered lens. The considerations of representation, inequities, patient care and support, and share of voice from healthcare providers must be at the forefront of every insight, strategic imperative, and activation we propose.

With this as our foundation, we’ve begun to expand our efforts through our capabilities. Implementing a stronger health literacy process as it pertains to patient and HCP communications. Ensuring there are checks and balances with language, developing an internal lexicon to brand how we address gaps in communication, and involving the organization in its development. From our office experience manager to our president, health literacy must be an intricate part of our interoffice conversations, client meetings, and final products.

Our efforts continue with our client partners, ensuring we inform them of the opportunities to further define patient segments for treatment options and arm HCPs with the nuance and language to encourage their patient population to consider new products beneficial to their quality of life. Together, we and our client partners solve for ways to share the message of support and awareness through unbranded efforts. Meeting our client population where they are and providing them with the information to make more informed decisions about the type of healthcare they deserve.

And finally, forward our commitment to DEI through awareness campaigns that highlight healthcare gaps affecting our most vulnerable. When we launched, I DON’T HAVE A BOX, it was important to highlight resources. With limited ability to identify on medical forms, persons who are mixed race and multiethnic lose the opportunity for healthcare providers to get the breadth of their medical history outside of genetic factors. With a quick Google search, one can find that Black Americans have the highest mortality rate of cancer, Southeast Asians disproportionately suffer from cervical cancer, and heart disease and cancer aren’t just the leading causes of death among Black Americans, but everyone in the BIPOC community. When we pair ancestry and statistical information together, it signals the need for more attention to detail, to create a sustainable health plan and partnership between the patient and HCP.

Considering the touchpoints DEI affects, it would behoove us — or anyone — to treat DEI as an afterthought or a mere strategic element to seal a deal. DEI must be the perspective — layered into the groundwork of everything we do. And we measure that by the effectiveness of our internal and external programs and the ability of each person in our employee community to naturally think and follow this pathway to achieve our standard of success within our core values of commitment, integrity, and respect.