Roundtable Recap: Creating Meaningful Connections to Advance a Modern Healthcare Landscape

Written by: Ayanna Telfort, EVP, Director of Client Services

At the end of September, I had the pleasure of hosting a roundtable at MM+M’s DE&I Deciphered Summit. This virtual event assembled US-based healthcare marketing professionals to examine contemporary issues contributing to health inequities and what our industry can do to affect progress.  As the daughter of a retired specialty nurse, my life (in one way or another) has been entwined with healthcare. And yet, as a Black woman in America, I am also keenly aware that the health challenges I face are not solely due to our broken healthcare system but, rather, are further complicated by a hurtful past steeped in racism.

When discussing some of the common ills within our healthcare system (eg, antiquated technologies, healthcare deserts, and treatment inequities), we believed most of them were connected to the history of scientific racism in our healthcare system. There is a dark history of unethical medical experimentation with people of color that has led to a long legacy of medical mistrust and inequities. It was apparent from the opening of the discussion that many attendees were familiar with the dark past of medicine, whether it was the injustice of the Tuskegee trials or the troubling gynecological experiments on Black slave women by J. Marion Sims (who today is seen as the “Father of Gynecology”), and were eager to talk about what that means for us today. 

This lingering medical mistrust plays into how minorities interact with clinicians and the healthcare system today. This was no more evident than during the height of the pandemic, when many people of color felt disenfranchised, overlooked, and neglected. However, this represents one half of the factors that contribute to the healthcare disparities. The other half relates to the antiquated measurement and screening protocols that continue to put people of color at a disadvantage. In fact, there is much peer-reviewed documentation of how ignorant assumptions are still present in clinical evaluations today, often resulting in delayed diagnoses, misdiagnoses, and ineffective treatment plans that leave many patients of color vulnerable.

For many in the audience, finding out about these issues was troubling, because it is not what we know that scares us but rather what we don’t know. We challenged the audience to amalgamate all these factors to brainstorm ways that we, as healthcare marketers, can help make a difference. There were many remarkable ideas and insights that spoke to the need to look at the future through acknowledgment, re-evaluation, and then intentional action. 

First, it is important for healthcare marketers to do what they do best, by immersing into prioritized health categories to uncover more of those detriments that keep our healthcare system in the dark ages. Once we uncover key areas and acknowledge the deficits, we can then move forward by re-evaluating these antiquated systems and articulating a way forward that supports equity. We must also support those efforts that speak to the science and root out assumptions that were based on irrelevant and racist considerations. This will then support activation. Once we know better, we can do better—making sure we are building a more inclusive healthcare environment. We also have to push our marketing counterparts to create and distribute information in areas that help build integrity of the information and are more inclusive.

Lastly, it was very clear from the roundtable that the most important thing to remember is that “representation matters.”  It is not only important to have all voices represented in our marketing initiatives and campaigns, but also in our workplace. Greater diversity within our organizations will ensure that the healthcare communications we develop will have the power to impact health for all.

At RFH, we continue to strive toward, by fueling the practice of modern medicine, and that means delving into areas that aren’t always so pretty and well organized. Nevertheless, we know that when we do that, it will lead us to a more innovative and forward-thinking health environment. We would love to keep this conversation going, so let us know your thoughts, by engaging with us on social media or reaching out to us directly at info@razorfishhealth.com.