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Authors:
- HCG Health Disparities & Inequities Council
- Christine Wyble, Head of Scientific Communication and Field Medical, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation
Our society, including HCPs, patients, and their families and caregivers, is increasingly in-touch and more socially conscious and aware of disparities, inequities, and the realities of how access to healthcare can vary across communities. These audiences are actively seeking new information and expect industries, including pharma/biotech, and governments to know and do better—and they are starting to.
A growing mantra in our industry is the desire to “deliver therapies at the right place and at the right time to the right person/group.” As important as communicating the science and clinical data to the target group of HCPs may be, we must also ensure that our content proactively contextualizes social determinants of health and is designed and distributed in a way that better enables our audiences to recognize and take appropriate actions against disparities and inequities to improve patient access and quality of care. While new partnerships and programs in our industry reinforce the importance and priority of health equity, operationalizing efforts, particularly for the medical affairs community, to address health disparities and inequities can still appear to be a difficult and overwhelming task.
We can begin to approach this seemingly uphill task, however, by leveraging a simple and reproducible rubric: Explore, Educate, Embrace. By using this framework, we can shape our approach to addressing this important issue by incorporating it into our daily work. And, as we explore each element of this framework, we’ll discuss simple, actionable steps to begin operationalizing health equity efforts within Medical Affairs.
Explore
To fully appreciate the breadth and depth of the impact of disparities and inequities in a disease space or therapeutic area, we must first immerse ourselves in data and research to understand what literature and information already exist and ensure a strong understanding of the patient population. We’re not only referring to clinical risk factors or demographics but also key psycho-social and ethno-cultural factors. What are those social determinants of health that affect the likelihood of receiving a timely and accurate diagnosis and impact the care that the patient might receive or have access to? We can build this “Explore” mindset into our work using the same techniques we use in our daily efforts, and by also expanding our view to gain a more holistic picture of the patient journey.
We also need to think carefully about the best methods to obtain data on health disparities, and more importantly, the right questions to ask. For example, RWE data may include a more diverse population than a clinical trial, but if data on economic situation, language fluency, and other social determinants of health are not captured, the RWE data may reflect many of the same biases already existing in clinical trial data. We need to design better surveys and patient registries and work with HCPs, patients, and other stakeholders to learn what questions we need to ask so that we can identify ways to improve outcomes and reduce inequities. More strategies around obtaining data can be found below:
| Tactic | Benefits |
| Literature review | A comprehensive review and analysis on the research conducted to provide a foundation and starting point to work from |
| Social listening (including HCP social networks) | More targeted understanding on HCP and patient’s thoughts, concerns, and needs. Social listening also allows us to understand share of voice of digital opinion leaders and patient advocates who are leading the conversation in different spaces |
| Stakeholder partnerships and interviews | Helps us develop 1:1 partnership that allows us to better create tools and communications that meet the needs of our stakeholders |
| Focus groups | An information gathering technique that allow us to learn from both HCPs and patients about the barriers that exist within the patient journey and brainstorm ways to address them |
Educate
HCP education is a core component of our role in Medical Affairs, so there are numerous ways we can incorporate a focus on addressing health inequities and disparities into the content we produce and the way we produce it. What social and cultural barriers might the patient population in question be facing? What health literacy gaps exist that we need to address? Is this channel going to reach my intended audience? Does the audience even have broadband service? These are some simple questions we should start asking ourselves.
The subtle shift in our approach to content can dramatically change the value and utility of the output that we create for both HCPs and patients. We can produce materials in the appropriate language, formats, and channels that are readily accessible by diverse populations. This can ensure HCPs are better equipped to address the healthcare needs of the specific populations that they serve. For example, while a HCP treating patients with diabetes in a more affluent area may focus on clinical parameters, in a less affluent area, the HCP may also consider social determinants of health like whether the patient has access to affordable nutritious foods. Each HCP needs tailored educational materials to best serve their patient population, and it is our responsibility to make ourselves aware of such differences and provide educational resources accordingly.
With the rise of technological innovation that allows us to deliver omnichannel experiences to our customers, integrating content that incorporates health disparities and inequities will help to reach the right HCPs through the most effective channels. We can take advantage of the tools now available to us to map out and understand patient populations and our HCP audiences and listen to what their needs are with greater accuracy than ever before. This in turn allows us to create targeted content and leverage a modular approach to distribute personalized content to individual customers.
Diverse representation is also key, both in terms of which voices we include and how those voices are represented in the content we are creating. It is a critical way in which we can enhance our communication efforts. And beyond these measures, we need to consider how these discussions are communicated with the intended audience, using cultural, linguistic, and community-based partnerships as tools to facilitate conversation.
Embrace
Addressing health inequities must become a part of our identity and embraced in our daily work; it must be at the forefront of our endeavors and a proactive inclination and not a reactive afterthought. We can ensure the right internal training, embrace a common lexicon and “conversation starters” to use with our stakeholders to seek out potential sources of bias in care, and identify experts on health disparities to share their knowledge and partner with us on initiatives. These sample tactics allow us to internalize the work we’re doing, because embracing this new mindset is critical in not only impacting marginalized patients but also in making a larger impact to society. A system where healthcare is delivered equitably allows for better development of therapeutics and ensures we’re most effective in addressing healthcare challenges for the represented patient population.
Our industry is responsible for communicating vital information on therapies that have the power to save lives. The Explore, Educate, and Embrace framework can help drive tangible steps in address health disparities and inequities across a variety of communities to help address various inequities and education access. The responsibility to address this topic is important and deserves our full focus and attention to help ensure that all patients receive healthcare in an equitable manner.
The Innovate article series highlights the ideas of Medical Affairs thought leaders from across the biopharmaceutical and MedTech industries. To submit your article for consideration, please contact MAPS Communications Director, Garth Sundem.
