The Weber Shandwick Collective Launches Health Equity Model

(MENAFN- PRovoke) LONDON - The Weber Shandwick Collective (TWSC) has added another innovative healthcare offer to its portfolio, developing a strategic planning model to improve health equity and outcomes, focusing on low income and ethnic minority patient communities.

CORE (Community, Offer, Respect and Ease) has been developed with health and care charity, the Patients Association, and health equity advisor Dr Tammy Boyce to help healthcare and pharma brands put equity at the centre of health communications.

The model aims to improve the impact of health communication efforts by bringing betters insights and understanding of the barriers facing patient communities who are experiencing economic or social marginalisation and disadvantages.

The health equity offer will be integrated across all areas of the agency's health and wellness business in EMEA and joins existing TWSC health-focused initiatives including the Women's Health offer launched last year , as well as digital agency Flipside's Tech-quity projects, and the social impact team's Navigating Now offer.

The IPG agency group is intending to roll the health equity offer out globally, while recognising that healthcare systems and equity challenges vary widely in different geographies.

It is also TWSC's intention that the framework is non-proprietory and is used beyond its own agencies; the Patients Association will be running training programmes to support other specialist communicators, agencies and in-house teams in adopting the CORE model, to widen its impact beyond the agency's own clients.

The initiative incorporates the TWSC's Accessible by Design offer, which prioritises accessibility, and includes a focus on health literacy, since lower levels of health literacy are much more common among socially and economically disadvantaged communities, and among those from ethnic communities, who often struggle to understand and navigate health information and services.

TWSC head of health Nivey Nocher told PRovoke Media:“Health equity is not new for the agency – we started the conversation during the pandemic about how we can systemically integrate an approach that allows us to reach those who most need to be reached in terms of communications.

“A fifth of the population of Europe is at risk of poverty or social exclusion, and we're seeing clear links between deprivation and poor health. As populations are becoming more ethnically diverse, a link between ethnicity and poor health is also becoming more established. Our fundamental question was what role we can play, and how we can avoid exacerbating health inequity through communications.”

Kristen Dimmock, head of health strategy for UK & EMEA, told PRovoke Media:“We're not looking at a small pocket of society in need of better communication and information to manage their health, this is a huge swathe of people, exacerbated by the cost of living crisis and whole populations being displaced. It doesn't make sense for the UK or Europe, or healthcare providers in the pharma or wellness space – we're losing huge numbers of people through ineffective comms.

"This is not a problem that can be solved in isolation. We want to reach communities in a way that resonates, and put equity at the core of healthcare comms.”

Co-designed with patients from low income and ethnic minority communities, the CORE model addresses key barriers to accessibility and inclusivity in health communications campaigns and is based on four principles:

• Community: reflective messaging in the right place at the right time, including via community leaders, so from the ground-up and from peers, rather than from 'authority' figures
• Offer: meaningful support that is reflective of the needs of the audience, rather than delivering a message which has no clear path to help
• Respect: understanding and representation of patient audiences
• Ease:
  clear, easily understood messaging and calls-to-action, borrowing from behavioural science to remove barriers for people to act.

The Patients Association CEO Rachel Power told PRovoke Media:“We need to communicate in a way that gives people power, to look after the most vulnerable in our society. We talked to patients in low income and racial-minority communities about how to improve access to health information, and went into communities to talk to those with bad experiences of healthcare who can't access information. A lot of healthcare information doesn't talk to people in areas of high deprivation – they highlighted what was disengaging or clear.

“Weber Shandwick starting this work is brilliant. We need more person-centred conversations, because we can't have patient preparedness if we're not communicating effectively. We need healthcare companies to think harder about who they're talking to and how they share information. If we can make this information clearer with resonance, we could make a huge difference to people's lives. Action on this is one of the biggest things we can do to directly impact health outcomes.”

Health equity advisor Boyce said: "Certain patient communities are often incorrectly referred to by the private sector as 'hard-to-reach'. Through the design of a simple and pragmatic model the healthcare industry can confidently design patient communication programmes that will help address the needs of those struggling to access and understand information and support. Comms really can make a difference to healthy life expectancy.”

Weber Shandwick's president of health for EMEA, Rachael Pay, added:“We have a responsibility to do more to reach the communities experiencing avoidable and unjust differences in health that can be mitigated through better access and understanding of information.

“The reality is, as healthcare PR professionals we need to challenge our clients to intentionally address the needs of low income and ethnic minority communities and ultimately drive truly inclusive work with impact.”

MENAFN17102024000219011063ID1108789839