Elevate Healthcare Marketing

Elevate’s Nelson Shares How to Best Work With Advocacy Groups

Elevate’s Nelson Shares How to Best Work With Advocacy Groups

MM&M Chats with Chief Scientific Officer Kathleen Nelson, PhD

Blue Bell, PA August 2, 2017

Each month MM&M asks four executives to share their thoughts on a topical question facing healthcare marketers. August’s topic featured rare diseases with the following question: Patient communities and advocacy groups have become increasingly influential in the regulatory and commercial process for rare-disease drugs. How can marketers best work with these organizations to achieve brand objectives?

Kathy Nelson, Chief Scientific Officer shared the following thoughts:

The best relationships with patient communities and advocacy groups are characterized by the alignment of specific objectives. For example, a common experience among patients with rare diseases is the protracted time between experiencing symptoms and receiving a diagnosis. The fundamental goal of patient communities and advocacy groups is to share information that will speed up proper diagnosis and help patients get therapy. This objective dovetails with marketers’ objective of providing patients and healthcare providers with information on therapeutic options. Disease-awareness campaigns serve a particularly important role in the rare-disease space, in that they educate patients and healthcare providers alike. As a result, those providers may recognize the disease in their patients more rapidly. The best-case outcome is improved recognition and care for these patients — who often go on to become staunch advocates.

Head to MM&M to read the full article and see additional responses to this interesting topic.