[00:00:00] Stephanie Wierwille: Welcome to the No Normal Show, brought to you by BPDA marketing services firm that delivers the future to healthcare’s leading brands. This is where we leave all things status quo, traditional old school, and boring in the dust, and instead we celebrate the new, the powerful, the innovative, the bold, all around the future of healthcare, marketing and communications.
I’m your host, Stephanie Weir Will, EVP of Engagement, and it is just Chris and I today. Dez has left us alone, so Hi Chris. Um, I’m joined by Chris Bevelo, chief Transformation Officer.
[00:00:30] Chris: Dez has left the building. She’s left us on our own. Yes. But we’ll be okay. It’s never great when Dez isn’t here, but we’ll be okay.
We’ll do it.
[00:00:39] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Shout out Dez, if you’re, if you’re listening to this on your, on your cross country road trip, we miss you. Um, but we have a jam packed agenda today. So first of all, we’re gonna cover a really feel good story. It’s time for some heartwarming vibes, uh, out of healthcare. And then we’re gonna get onto some headlines.
So some really exciting, [00:01:00] uh, really high tech news from Mayo Clinic and Nvidia. Um, and then we have, uh, a headline that is, um, oof a little unfortunate around a class action lawsuit and settlement that a wellness brand, uh, beverage brand has cost. And our main topic today is gonna be, uh, really exciting and complex and I can’t wait to dig into it with you, Chris.
We’re calling it the information tornado. Um, or doctors have lost their Mount Olympus of medicine based on a New York Times piece. We just saw
[00:01:29] Chris: two metaphors in one there. Two, is it a metaphor or an analogy? I never know. Tornado and a mountain. What are, what, what, what are those? Who’s the English user here?
I think it’s analogy.
[00:01:42] Stephanie Wierwille: Natural disaster soup. Analogy. Okay. I
[00:01:43] Chris: think it is an analogy. A soup. There’s three.
[00:01:47] Stephanie Wierwille: We can
[00:01:47] Chris: keep going if we want. We got a soup, a mountain, and a tornado.
[00:01:52] Stephanie Wierwille: This is like one of those matching games. Which one does not belong.
[00:01:55] Chris: Right, exactly.
[00:01:56] Stephanie Wierwille: So, um, okay. Before we get in a [00:02:00] few, um, housekeeping items, uh, first of all, I keep saying that I’m so excited for this one, Chris, I’m so excited for you to join our friends, Christine Koler, chief Marketing Communications Officer at Baptist Health, and Andy Chang, chief Marketing Officer at UChicago Medicine for a webinar on August 6th.
Called the Future of the Health System Chief Marketing Officer. And so we’re gonna dig all into the future of CMOs and hear from, um, two of our besties so you can find the link to register in our episode show notes. And then secondly, um, we always love to say if you wanna see all the sources that we are citing today and wanna dig more in to.
The various resources you can subscribe to our newsletter, the No Normal Rewind. That’ll give you a recap of this discussion and more. Um, and then Chris, do you wanna tease an exciting event that’s coming up early next year?
[00:02:55] Chris: Oh, the Joe Public Retreat?
[00:02:57] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
[00:02:58] Chris: Yeah. So the Joe [00:03:00] Public Retreat is coming. We’re gonna have more information going out, uh, in a couple weeks, but it’s back.
And we will be in sunny South Beach, Florida in February, which is amazing just by itself. But we have, uh, I’m not gonna share what it is yet. I’m just gonna tease it, Stephanie, but we have maybe the coolest, most engaging agenda planned. I know you agree with that. Uh, I think people will really, really love this.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, we, we cap the attendance of these things so we can actually have the kind of experience we want. So there’s only room for like 40 folks. Uh, I expect that, uh, that list to be filled up mighty fast. So we will have more information in a couple weeks, but, uh, watch for it. It’s coming.
[00:03:51] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Hard agree that it’s a really exciting topic and I cannot wait for it. And yes. Um, whenever those invites drop, jump to [00:04:00] attend. You don’t wanna be like me who missed out on Dolly Parton’s residence in Vegas. So don’t, don’t do that for this Joe Public retreat
[00:04:08] Chris: Dolly Parton. All right. Will not be there though.
Let’s just be clear.
[00:04:11] Stephanie Wierwille: No,
[00:04:12] Chris: no. People might conflate like the coolest Joe public ever. And that statement, unfortunately, Dolly Parton, most likely, most likely, you never know, but most likely will not be there. Like, yeah, you never know. Yeah,
[00:04:22] Stephanie Wierwille: she’s showing up everywhere these days. But no, no, she’s not planned.
Okay, so let’s, let’s first start with some really heartwarming news. I think we’ve been covering a lot of heavy things lately on this show, and there was a, um, a viral story that was just really, really touching this past week. So one of our clients, advent Health, uh, had a beautiful story that hit the good news movement and a lot of brands jumped in on and really got national news.
So the story is that Sheila, a 62-year-old environmental services team member, got this surprise bridal shower from her colleagues and all of it was [00:05:00] videoed and captured and shared on Instagram, and she just had the most genuine reaction to it. You really have to see it to, to know what I’m talking about.
But you can’t watch it without crying. Um, you can watch it without crying. And so it led to 6 million plus views overnight. And I think what was really cool was all manner of brands jumped in Hilton, Delta Airlines, tart Cosmetics. They jumped in, they offered Sheila these amazing gifts. So she’s actually taking a trip to New York City to celebrate on behalf of Hilton and Delta.
Um. All of this surrounded Advent Health. So I don’t know if you saw it, Chris, and if you had a take on it. Um, it was lovely.
[00:05:39] Chris: I did, I saw it a few times. Uh, I actually saw it before I realized it was our own client, uh, which is, which is an added bonus, but it just, it caught me from the get-go because it was so authentic.
Uh, and like you said, so heartwarming and, uh, I don’t know, it just reinforces what’s cool about. What we do and who [00:06:00] we do it with, and the amazing people that give their lives to help other people. So it’s neat to see them celebrated in such a great way.
[00:06:10] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. It’s easy to get caught up in all the challenges of what it looks like to be part of healthcare, you know?
Um, but I think amidst the challenging parts of the job, it’s these kinds of moments that are. That are so special, and I think it’s just awesome that our clients get to amplify these kinds of stories every day. So yeah, if you haven’t seen it, um, check the show notes if you’re listening and, uh, shut a tear or two.
So with that behind us, um, we’re gonna get into our first nerdy headline of the day. Uh, and that is around the new partnership that was just announced this week by Mayo Clinic and Nvidia. Um, of course, Mayo Clinic is always on the cutting edge of clinical research and technology. Um, and have had many partnerships along this route over time.
But, um, they have recently teamed up with Nvidia to, uh, create an AI, super computer, super computer. They’re calling it the [00:07:00] Super Pod and its purpose is to diagnose diseases more quickly. So it’s around this area of digital pathology, which pathology is. The ability to kind of spot diseases. Think about like old school microscopes, right?
Like reviewing slides, but also lab tests and diagnostics of all kinds in order to identify what is a disease, um, and to help diagnose it. And so by combining Mayo Clinic’s clinical data and also NVIDIA’s tech, the, the goal is to really learn from, um, historical data in pathology. And really spot diseases faster.
So super exciting, breakthrough. Um, what did you think about this one, Chris?
[00:07:42] Chris: Well, I think it’s great because, uh, Mayo Clinic has tried to innovate in this space before, and if folks don’t remember, they partnered with IBM and IBM Watson, which was a super early, I mean, they called it ai. I don’t even know, like, you know, if you compare it to [00:08:00] like what we talk about AI today, I don’t think it’s anything close to it, but it was.
It was the attempt to use machine learning to do something similar. They saw this back in 2011. It lasted about a decade, uh, and it didn’t really end up where it they wanted to end up, right? But that’s how this kind of stuff happens and fits and starts. So you, you, someday we’ll look back and we’ll be like, first there was the IBM Watson and then that kind of stumbled and then there was this and that.
So it’s great to see them back at it. Uh, the cool thing about the IBM Watson experiment was it involved a lot of other health systems too, and I think that’s one thing I’ll keep an eye on because Mayo Clinic is phenomenal, but Mayo Clinic also tends to serve, let’s just say a higher level of patient in terms of demographic.
So, uh, higher level of income, that kind of thing. Uh, there’s a lot of reasons for that, but I hope that they’re able to incorporate data that’s representative of the entire. World, or at least the United States, uh, [00:09:00] because that will ensure that whatever they’re coming up with is going to maximize the impact for everybody, uh, and not be stilted or biased in some way.
Uh, but I’m sure they’re thinking of all of that. And I think, obviously with Nvidia as a partner, this could turn into some incredible, incredible stuff. It reminds me of what we, we talked about a couple of episodes ago. I don’t remember, Stephanie, two or three coming outta Microsoft. They had, um, their ai, uh, technology that had shown up and kind of beat physicians in terms of how to diagnose accurately.
Uh, I think this is, you know, the same thing on steroids is the wrong word. Like 10 x steroids, a hundred x steroids. I don’t know, but it’s pretty exciting. We’ll have to keep an eye on what it actually is able to deliver.
[00:09:50] Stephanie Wierwille: I, I think it’ll be fun to watch this one develop. Um, you know, to your point, Mayo Clinic has a lot of partnerships with health systems all over the nation, and I think a part of their platform is about pulling [00:10:00] in variety of, of data, not just their own patients.
So I, that wasn’t in the article, but yeah, that would be, that would be awesome if it did that. I think. This is exciting to me. My mom actually worked in pathology, so she would come home every night and she was in the clinical laboratory and she’d talk about what it was like to look at cells and, you know, really determine what things were.
So, it’s almost like tens of thousands of her working really quickly, is how I’m thinking of this. Um, so anyway, um, okay. Our next headline is a brand that we’ve, we’ve touched on this brand before and some of its mistakes and mishaps. Um, and that is the beverage company, poppy. Which is sort of a wellness brand that has touted its ability to be healthy, good for you.
Soda. It’s really had some mainstream marketing, including Super Bowl, which is what we, when we talked about this last time. But, um, poppy has been claiming that it has gut healthy prebiotic sodas and due to its claims, it is now up for a class action lawsuit and has agreed to pay about 9 [00:11:00] million, 8.9 million to settle it.
Specifically what they said that got them in trouble was they used phrases like for a healthy gut. And their tagline was, be gut happy. Be gut healthy. Um, and they’ve really gone in on this, you know, wear Coca-Cola, but not, I think they’re actually owned by, um, Pepsi or have an acquisition perhaps. But, um, they’re really going up against big soda.
So
[00:11:24] Chris: big soda, it’s
[00:11:25] Stephanie Wierwille: just inch. Yeah. Big soda. Um. It’s just interesting because, you know, as a marketer, you’re always trying to figure out what the right claims are, and this was not the right claim. Um, Chris, what was your, your thought when you saw this one?
[00:11:37] Chris: Well, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of ironic hypocrisies.
Is that a, is that redundant to say? Ironic hypocrisies? I don’t know. Like, not everything ironic is hypo is everything that’s hypocritical. Ironic, I don’t know. Uh, but the idea that it’s healthy soda, let’s just start with that. Like hilarious jumbo shrimp, healthy soda. Also if, if they are owned by Pepsi, that’s also [00:12:00] hilarious and ironic.
Uh, and I think, you know, it, it, the way these things usually come about is honestly a competitor, tattles, because there’s so much of that out there that if, if every company’s claims were run through the same kind of filter, uh, 50%. The healthcare claims, health claims out there would probably fall into the same category that Poppy’s underwrite.
So usually they just fly by and nothing happens. It’s only when, when a competitor usually calls whoever the FTC, the f fda, I don’t even know who you call and say like, that’s not true. That’s not fair. And then there’s some kind of, um, thing. So maybe Coke called Tattled on Pepsi. I don’t know. Uh, but there’s just so much of it.
I know, Stephanie, you’ve got some. Takes on that, right? Like, boy, if we’re gonna go after Poppy for, um, gut happy, gut healthy, I mean, I, if [00:13:00] that was their only claim, that’s so broad. Uh, so I, I don’t know, but maybe there’s more detail to it somewhere, but it, it’s just like, yes, we need to stop this. But I don’t think we’re, I don’t think we’re prepared for what that would really mean if we were serious about it across the board.
So not trying to give Poppy an excuse or let him off the hook. But there’s so much of this, for example, Stephanie should give a couple of your favorites.
[00:13:27] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, well, I get fired up about this for lots of reasons. Um, first of all, I’m an Olly Pop girl. For the record, OP is a competitor to Poppy. Um, maybe they called ’em out.
I don’t know. I’m not saying that. Don’t take that, you know, seriously. But, um, they’re my preferred healthy soda, and they don’t claim to be gut healthy, but they do talk about inulin, which is fiber, which is part of the drink. They also have less sugar for what it’s worth. So anyway, um, so yeah, Ali Pop is a direct competitor and this has been an extremely successful growth category inside the beverage category.[00:14:00]
But to your point, Chris, you know, you think about Cheerios. Cheerios makes claims directly on their box that says it’s heart healthy. And when you read the fine print, it says it may l lower cholesterol when compared to. Then they, you know, compare it to other kinds of diets. And what I’ve always had trouble with is when you look at the ingredients of Cheerios, it’s highly processed, full of sugar.
And I’m like, how are we still saying that this is heart healthy? So if you just took big food and broke down almost any product, I think you could find this kind of thing happening. Um, and we don’t hold CPG to the same standards that we hold healthcare to
[00:14:36] Chris: or this, I knew I couldn’t find the brand, so I Googled it and immediately I got it.
I always remember I’m a big licorice fan, the cherry strawberry, none of that black ORs. You can have that. Stephanie, you like black or don’t you? No, I can’t even say the word. Oh, it was terrible. Anyway, I always laugh ’cause we get it occasionally. I think it’s twizzlerss and it has some kind of claim on it and I couldn’t remember exactly what it was.
So I, I [00:15:00] googled fat free licorice and the, the first thing that comes up is good and plenty. So I think a lot of people know what good and plenty is. Literally across the top of good and Plenty. It says a fat free candy. Now, I bet it is fat free, but that is, that is like saying, you know, like arsenic free for candy because okay, good.
It doesn’t have all this other stuff, and including fat, it’s still not good for you. Candy is, there’s nothing healthy about Kandy Zero, so that’s not a untrue claim. It’s just a, I don’t know, misleading. Because it infers that it’s healthy, right? When you see, when you see fat free, you infer that’s healthy.
Well, it doesn’t have fat, but that doesn’t make it healthy, right? So I think that’s a similar thing that, again, you could go after, I guess all licorice brands. I think Twizzler probably says the same thing. Um, it always makes me laugh when I see that, like, what are you doing? [00:16:00] Nobody’s eating Twizzlers thinking that it’s healthy food.
Why are you trying to claim any kind of health benefit? It’s just crazy. Like you’re literally eating plastic, like licorice is plastic sugar. It’s delicious, it’s plastic sugar. Like it just, nobody thinks they’re getting healthier by eating licorice. So anyway, I think there’s a lot of that. A lot of that.
[00:16:22] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. And I’m glad you’re as passionate as I’m about this, you know, zero carb water type of problem. So that actually leads us into our, which I think I’ve seen that claim actually, and I rolled my eyes. So that leads us into our main topic, um, because we’re gonna get into how that’s part of this problem, perhaps, which is
[00:16:42] Chris: mm-hmm.
[00:16:42] Stephanie Wierwille: Information that has been taken to various extremes and changed constantly and confuses people. So our main topic here, as we said earlier, we have two metaphors. We’re playing with what I think we’re calling this, the information tornado. Um, and I’ll just give kind of an overview and then I’ll kind of share [00:17:00] how did, how did we get to this?
Metaphor. Um, but you know, we are thinking about the last five years and the constant changing of clinical guidance that has been constant state of flux. So you have all kinds of cultural shifts and new research and public pressure. Um, and ever since, you know, 2020, we’ve been in this changing flux of clinical guidance.
And so I think we all know that. We all feel that. But just was it two days ago? So July 28th. If there was a article in the New York Times that came out, this is our second metaphor, which is Mount Olympus. So Mount Olympus is gone. Um, the collapse of Central Medical Authority, and it starts with this really interesting story from a primary care doctor who said, who told the story about how she was recommending a vaccine to a patient.
And she just used the innocuous phrase, we recommend you get the current vaccine. And then stopped herself short and said, wait a minute, who is we? Started thinking about how we has typically been institutions that, you know, we trust, that have [00:18:00] evidence-based sources that have, you know, kind of clinical medical guidance.
You can think about the CDC, the NIH, you know, the medical Mount Olympus, if you will, um, including associations, government agencies, all of the above. But she said, um, and you pulled this quote out, Chris, um, she said, but now that support is a shell of what it once was. I can no longer automatically rely on these institutions because they’re scientific North Star.
Has been replaced by one that seems nakedly political. So we are not gonna get political in the breakdown of this, but we do wanna pull out how, the fact is that there is changing clinical guidance. Um, no matter what side, you know, you take on that it’s been changing very, very fast. Um, it’s been a roller coaster and so doctors have essentially lost their mountaintop.
So that’s my overview, Chris.
[00:18:49] Chris: Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s, we talked about this in the Joe Public 2030 book and so we’ll touch on that briefly ’cause it goes a lot further. One of the five predictions in there for how consumers [00:19:00] would engage healthcare through this decade was the continuing polarization of healthcare.
And our prediction was we would start seeing hospitals and health systems and clinics grow out of that, that were politically oriented in terms of their view on healthcare. Uh, and we have seen that. What we did not expect was that whether you believe it’s politicized or not, I’ll just call ’em alternative views to the established medical beliefs on certain things have now taken root in, what was this?
This doctor called Mount Olympus. So the things that we as a society and the medical community have always relied on to give us scientific guidance on what we should be doing. The F, the FDA, the CD. C. CMS, all those things, right? So again, like Stephanie said, we’re not here to debate whether what’s coming out of there is right or wrong.
The point of this is that it’s different and we’ve seen things [00:20:00] even recently, right? So we’ve seen the, the, um, release of all the people who are on the, the, I don’t know which organization it was, I should know that, um, the vaccine committee like that establishes vaccine guidelines for the federal government for the United States.
Uh, all those people were let go. So just gone. Now there’s concern that the same thing will happen to a similar group. That sole purpose is looking at preventative guidelines. So for example, how often should men, or when should they start getting, and how often should they get a colonoscopy? How often should women get, um, breast cancer screening?
All those kind of things. That was always centralized in a way that these are volunteer physicians. Wasn’t about politics, wasn’t about any kind of point of view. It was about the science, wherever that’s at. Of course there’s always debates, right? We’ve had debates forever about say colonoscopies, like, oh, you’re supposed to get one at 40 and one at 50.
And then they’re like, well, no, that if you do it too often, [00:21:00] you get too many false positives. And people go through, um, procedures and care that they may not need because if they hadn’t had the scan, they would’ve never known and it would’ve never have been a problem. Uh, and so that’s all fair. And as long as that’s done in the, in the realm of science, we’re never gonna know all this perfectly.
At least not everything. But if, if this is changing to a degree that changes your guidelines, or let’s say the a MA has guidelines that differ from the FDA, what are you going to do as a health system? So there’s a lot to talk about there, but. Uh, whether it’s political or not is kind of beside the point.
It is, it’s happening. And so we really have to think about what does that mean in terms of care, of course, first and foremost, and most of the resources that we’ll cite in the show notes go into physicians worrying mostly about how this is gonna impact patient care. But as [00:22:00] marketers, we have to think about everything from our brands to what happens in social media.
To our communications. It really does impact so much of what we do. Uh, and so let’s talk about it. Tornado is a tornado.
[00:22:17] Stephanie Wierwille: It is a tornado, and it’s an exhausting tornado. ’cause I think about it both in the side of the physician and then also the patient, and to your point, the marketer as well. But from the physician’s vantage point, like this article points out, physicians are, are, I mean, they, they’re, they’re super time strapped.
They’re, they’re just struggling to get back to, you know, patients with communication and to have all their appointments and get everything done. In the meantime, they have to keep up on the clinical research that was already, you know, a mountain of data that was impossible to keep up with. And now to keep up with changing clinical guide, I mean, it’s just too much.
It’s just too much. And when it changes constantly and how do you know, you know, and of course, physicians are focused on giving the most scientific back recommendations that they know to be [00:23:00] true based on the current science. But, but the problem is. That’s a sliding, shifting sand. Yes. Because it’s become politicized.
And then I think on the patient side, this information tornado, which includes vaccine guidance, screening guidance, but I would also lump in there and we’re gonna get into some of the other areas, but everything from, you know, mental health to women’s health, to nutrition, um, guidance, all of that, it just diminishes trust and it changes who patients listen to.
Because you think about if you’re, I don’t know, you have a friend and that friend is telling you different things every day, you’re gonna stop trusting that friend. So that’s kind of where consumers are. Like, we don’t, we’re not rational beings as humans. We don’t have the time to keep up with things and be fact-based.
We’re gonna slide into emotions and who we trust and who we trust is social media and influencers and, you know, big, big soda, right? So
[00:23:55] Chris: big soda.
[00:23:57] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Or you know, the brands that you know and [00:24:00] love every day. So, oh, I’m exhausted thinking about the tornado.
[00:24:04] Chris: It’s, and it, it, what it brings is it brings, like you just said, if you, if you take the foundation and the foundation, let’s just be clear, and I think you’ll hear you, you’ll hear this, even if you read this article that we mentioned or any of the others, it’s never perfect.
This is never perfect. Uh, but it, at least it’s scientific. So we can believe in the scientific process to continue to advance us and hopefully we continue to improve on that. Uh, I think a great example of this is the famous story of ulcers and the prevailing wisdom in the medical community. All the people that were mentioning, all the organizations were mentioning forever thought ulcers were caused essentially by stress.
Right? And then one physician researcher in 1980, I think. Um, came out and said, actually, no, it’s bacteria. It’s not, it’s not stress. Took 20 years for the medical [00:25:00] community to finally adopt that as the prevailing, you know, kind of point of view on ulcers. So this stuff takes time, right? Um, but at least there’s a foundation.
You take away that foundation and now it’s Katy Bar the door. I never really knew where that came from, but it’s kind of Katy bar the door, because now it’s every. Doctor for themselves. And to your point, Stephanie, they, people I think have an assumption that doctors are all knowing, right? Yeah. Like I think the average Joe and Jane public out there think physicians know everything they need to know.
Um, it’s still far more of an art than the science. It’s why we’re excited about things like Mayo Clinic and Nvidia who can take all the different ways that people approach ulcers and crunch all that. And hopefully, like within a month, say actually it’s bacteria. And actually this is how you treat it, right?
Uh, there’s so much variability in medicine that there has to be some kind of foundation that we can all agree on, [00:26:00] and you take that away and now you go into this doctor, you may hear something different than the doctor down the street and the doctor down the street. All at different sources. No foundation, woof.
That is not good for anybody. It’s not good for our society. It’s certainly not good for the people who need care.
[00:26:16] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, so I’m gonna dig into this on one of the areas where I see this happening. We already touched on it earlier with Poppy, but you know, the, the wellness ification of public health, if you will, the, you know, nutrition, science is constantly shifting, to your point, similar to the ulcer example, right?
Like, we learn more all the time about nutrition and. Personalized nutrition, even things like gut health, that all of that has a scientific foundation or it should. The problem comes when culture shifts and people start listening to their social feeds, their influencer friends, and then you have what I’m calling the Protein Ification of America as one example, which is this obsession with protein.
Get your protein in, you know, [00:27:00] beef, tallow fries, protein, popcorn, whatever it is. That, that actually is not based on a scientific foundation. It is based on what the culture wants today for a variety of reasons. And so, you know, it’s just, that’s just one tiny example, but there are many, many more that we constantly experience.
It’s almost like culture first, science second, I think. And as a physician, that is a challenging place to be in. And as a marketer, our job is to understand culture. You know, and create culture ideally. Um, and so it’s a really rock hard place area when as a marketer you need to communicate screening guidelines, vaccine guidelines, education symptoms, but at the same time you have to be, you know, also following the cultural trends.
[00:27:49] Chris: Yeah, I mean, a, a real life example of this. Another one where we’re already seeing the negative outcome of differing opinions on a medical scientific recommendation is the measles vaccine. [00:28:00] So measles was declared, um, eliminated in the year 2000. So the vaccine, I’m just gonna say like medical science will tell you, and I think the vast majority of doctors would agree, and scientists and researchers, that the vaccine got us to a place that measles was eradicated in 2000.
But then over the years there started to be a lot of skepticism of vaccines, including the measles vaccines. Including from now, the person who happens to lead our, um, health and human services. Right. And so while there has been no official, I don’t think, maybe, correct me if I’m wrong, Stephanie, no official declaration that, you know, guidance on measles vaccines.
There has been this skepticism that has now been validated by a person who’s in an official position and now we have more cases of measles in 2025. Than ever since it was, since it was labeled [00:29:00] eradicated and it’s only going up. So it’s the greatest outbreak we’ve had in two decades. Um, plus, uh, more than that actually.
’cause if you can go back further to see, you know, before it was considered eradicated. So that’s got real implications. It’s got implications for people that, you know, measles can kill people. It’s not just a no fun disease to get. If you have a compromised immune system, measles can be deadly. So these are real implications of which hospital’s going to say you need to get your measles vaccine, which hospitals are going to follow whatever guidelines coming out of the the FDA or wherever.
If they change that, it’s a perfect example of what are you going to do with that? Times what, like a hundred recommendations, not just vaccines, but. Again, uh, preventative screenings, diagnostics, treatments across the board. Uh, there’s just so much that could be, [00:30:00] uh, moved from We all agree on this to, no, we don’t.
[00:30:05] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. I think you, you called this, as we were talking about it beforehand, Chris, that we’re raising the ashes of COVID. There’s our fifth metaphor. Um, but it really does feel like that, right? Because this. Oh, this, this was some, a lot of what we were discussing back in 2020. Yeah. Big sigh was, you know, how do you get the right guidance out around vaccines and vaccinations and the healthcare industry came together and did a great job.
Um, and, but you know, also there was a lot of other factors at play and so it’s like we’re back here again. Maybe in a, in a worse, in a worse way now. It’s everything from, just to, just to paint the picture to show how broad this is. We’ve talked about vaccinations, we talked about clinical guidance, we talked about nutrition, science.
It’s things like this more cultural shift away from medication. It’s, you know, re re having a new look at what, what women’s health means and what services we can [00:31:00] and should offer. It’s, you know, is climate change even a public health issue anymore or not? It’s do we consider race and gender as part of our medical science practices?
And how we think about clinical studies, for example, gender affirming care. All of these things are in question and that’s what keeps, you know, health system communications professionals up at night. That’s what keeps marketers up at night because we’re the ones that have to communicate this and we’re the ones that have to deal with these changes.
So if there’s anything you wanna add, Chris, on the context, um, or, you know, we could maybe shift into what do we do, how do we, like, how do we navigate this as marketers?
[00:31:38] Chris: I think we do need to shift in that. ’cause it’s just, it’s too negative. It’s too much. Too much. I do think though, like you brought up another one, we talked about this in Joe Public 2030 book, so I just wanna hit a quick climate change.
Right? Most folks do not think about climate change and its impact on general health. If they think about it, if they believe it, if they think about it, it’s in terms of [00:32:00] hurricanes or droughts or fires, which is real. But it goes much further than that. So pick up the book and read it this very July. So just last month, the federal government came out and said there’s, there’s no more reason to consider climate pollution something we need to worry about.
So if we’re not even gonna try to think about it in the negative overall, then it absolutely will impact how we’re able to think about it. In terms of a negative and its impact on health. ’cause there’s federal funding tied to that. There’s, you know, even if you’re doing that with your own funding or you’re gonna get targeted for that.
Um, and so yeah, it’s a broad spectrum. What do you do? What, what can you do? And I think like the first thing I’ll say, and then Stephanie, I wanna throw it to you, is you are still, and I’m talking to the health systems out there, hospitals, health systems, clinics, medical providers, you are still the most trusted [00:33:00] voice.
For medical care. That was true before all this, that was true before COVID. Uh, a lot of these institutions that we’re talking about on mono Olympus really fell on their face. The CDC really hurt themselves during COVID at the outset. Um, so there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things there that you have to look at, but even before all that, doctors, nurses, hospitals, so you’re still the trusted voice.
You have to continue to show up as that voice of expertise. Now you have to decide what that means, but do not give that away. Do not step back from that. ’cause that’s a huge part of. Your brand value no matter who you are. So that’s the first thing I’ll say.
[00:33:46] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. And I actually have some recent data. So, um, the, our research team has been running a, a national study, um, in general around the state of healthcare.
And then we just cut it for one state specifically and for rural areas [00:34:00] and far and away across every single type of community. Um, the number one trusted source is physicians. Specifically primary care physicians. And secondly, I think it was, um, physicians at hospitals and health systems. You know, who’s at the bottom of that page is social media voices, governmental agencies.
And yet, and yet those are the loudest voices I would say. So, even though they’re less trusted. Um, and that’s what the data shows. There’s, they’re the loudest voices, especially the social media voices. So. I love that you pulled up, pulled Joe Public, Chris, because I remember it was maybe a year and a half ago.
I remember you were, you were talking about the rise of the health sex and um, somebody in the room in one of your presentations said, that’s already happened, check done. And yet here we are, you know, with this New York Times article and it’s, uh, still, still growing. So what do we do? I think one area that I like to think about, um, is just the, the empathy area of [00:35:00] starting with empathy first and foremost.
So I’m pulling this from, um, one of the friends of BPD, Dr. Gita Naar, Dr. G, author of Dead Wrong, um, and she’s a physician and she talks a lot about misin disinformation. And what I like about the way that she talks about it is. She’s, she doesn’t discuss miss and disinformation as, you know, these people are crazy or, you know, this is not right, or this, this is not the right way to think about it.
But she really digs into why and explores various life experiences, lived experiences, you know, all kinds of things that lead to this and starve with that empathy. So I think as marketers, we, as hard as it may be, we have to first start with. What are our audiences belief? Why, what have they experienced?
What do they need to hear from us? Um, and how do we best communicate this? ’cause it’s not just gonna be spiting out facts. That’s not gonna work.
[00:35:54] Chris: Uh, and I think like, just like the article says, it’s very hard for [00:36:00] individual health systems to, like, they’re not running their own vaccine trials. They’re not, they’re not, they’re not the ones creating the foundation that we talk about.
We have so many analogies or metaphors. Mount Olympus was the foundation, right? Of all these institutions that physicians went into. But there are other organizations that can provide that, right? The A MA, the a HA, um, that type of thing. So I think it’s just going to be harder, but you’ve just gotta work through that.
You gotta work through that. Uh, and maybe you’re gonna have to double your efforts to ensure that your patients understand. Why you’re saying what you’re saying, sourcing what you’re saying. I mean, before I think it was just accepted. Most people didn’t question, and it’s not bad that people question like, let’s be clear.
Um, it’s not bad that people who have kids with autism question why their kids get autism. Right. That’s a completely understandable, right. Um, where, where it starts [00:37:00] to, to be a, a problem is where be, you know, folks follow. Answers and solutions that really aren’t based in scientific truth, right? So you’re going to have to where you thought you could just say, do this, and people would be like, cool.
You may have to spend a lot more time and effort explaining to them why and who says that, right? Because they’re, they may not believe you, so you’re gonna have to back that up with whatever sources you have.
[00:37:27] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. And that’s, I, that’s a great example. Um, because, you know, actually that’s something Dr. G talks about in her book is.
Is parents of all cultures make the decisions for their families and children that they believe are best for them based on what they’ve experienced. And so that’s a perfect example. You know, the questioning of vaccines is a real question, and there’s nothing wrong with questioning the science, right?
It’s just how you do it and when and why. Um, and so, you know, I think that’s really where marketers can start is the audience insights and even thinking [00:38:00] about how do you communicate emotionally. So for example, a common question that we often have to deal with is, you know, we run urgent care campaigns, right?
How do you communicate? This is where you go to urgent care for, versus this is when you go to your PCP versus this is when you go to the er. Well, I’ll tell you, no amount of facts and bullet points will get that point across. You know what works better? Chris and I love behavioral science and thinking about nudging.
How do you build the right experience that just naturally puts people into that, um, you know, type of, uh, care when they need it. So I think it’s sometimes it’s less about messaging and more about what is the experience you can curate. Um, it’s not gonna be your proof points that are gonna get this solved.
It’s not gonna be a health literacy program that’s gonna solve this. It’s gonna be creating the right kind of cultural experience that meets your. Meet your patients. Yeah. So anyway, anything else you wanna add?
[00:38:51] Chris: Yeah, I just think like it, it’s not just the, it’s not just this kind of fracturing of the foundation of what is considered [00:39:00] institutional medical knowledge.
It’s also the world we live in that has been fractured in terms of where we get our information and we, we can spend a whole podcast on that. Right. But it’s, I’m, I’m thinking of this because, um. I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which I haven’t seen forever. If you have not seen that movie, by the way, it’s phenomenal.
Uh, it’s from the seventies, but I was noting like, oh my gosh, like this is what the family was like. And this is how it was in the seventies, by the way. I’m gonna go on a sidetrack here. Uh, as a Gen Xer, like mom and dad screaming at the kids, like, shut up and blah, blah, blah. It was like, oh yeah, that’s how it was.
And there’s one part in the movie. Where one of the characters, I don’t if you haven’t seen it, I don’t wanna get into the whole plot, but he’s really just obsessed because he is, had a close encounter with an alien. He is obsessed with trying to figure out this vision he has to the point that he’s doing crazy things around his house and his wife gets more and more worried and at some point she’s just snaps and she’s [00:40:00] taking the kids to go live with her to go stay with her sister.
They got a station wagon, right? She’s like, get in the car. Get in the car, get in the car. So there are three kids, there’s like a 4-year-old girl. Maybe a 10-year-old boy and a 7-year-old boy. The boy’s, you know, like flying to the back. She takes the girl and puts her in the front seat. No car seats, no seat belts, nothing like she puts the smallest child right in the passenger seat, flies out of the driveway to get away from him and zooms down the street.
And I think who today questions whether your kid should use a seatbelt. Who questions whether they should have a car seat now? Having kids, you know, back in the day, I remember how the car seat kind of things evolved. Like, oh no, now you gotta face ’em backwards. Oh no, you don’t face ’em backwards too long.
You gotta face ’em forward and blah, blah, blah. But everybody uses car seats, like I’m pretty sure. And maybe there’s some people who also believe the world is flat that don’t. But this is an example of [00:41:00] back then, there was only so many channels. This is what you were told to do. And people followed that rule for right or from wrong.
Now. Who knows, maybe we’ll start seeing backlash against car seats. Like that’s how far we’ve gone. But it sh it gives me a little hope because I don’t think there’s a lot of parents that question the need for a car seat or seat belts, right? So if we can agree on that basic thing, hopefully we can get back to a place we agree on the other things that make us all healthy and safe.
So that’s my, that’s my final shot at positivity. And watch the movie. It’s a great movie.
[00:41:36] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Well, we’ll end on an optimistic note there, um, because it is a top topic and there’s a lot to dig into, and I think we’ve given plenty of sources we can link to everything from Joe Public 2030, um, to this article that came out two days ago that started this whole conversation.
So we’ll close the information tornado there. Um, but for everybody listening, we love to hear from you. [00:42:00] Shoot us an email, uh, at no normal@bpdhealthcare.com. Share the show with friends and colleagues. We love to hear your feedback. Um, and until next time, don’t be satisfied with the normal push, the no normal, and we will talk to you soon.
[00:42:14] Chris: See ya.
