allaboutadvocacy.com

Dox populi

Have been getting ready this week for Weber Shandwick’s global healthcare summit in Madrid, where advocacy will be a key topic.   This gave me a good excuse to refresh my understanding of how far advocacy has come in healthcare, a category I don’t get to look at every day.  

Here was the question: Like in other product and service categories, are individuals increasingly looking to each other for advice and information about health and disease?   That would certainly track with how, in recent years,  Americans have had to increasingly rely on themselves to manage their own health and even chronic conditions (a different but related question and debate).  Or, on the other hand, does healthcare remain something of a sequestered category where a singular reliance on the “all-knowing” doctor, concerns about privacy, and a subject matter that often times, let’s be honest, makes us too squeamish to want to talk about it put up natural barriers for advocacy to be a go to source?

A few interesting facts (I’m sure there are plenty others):

* Word-of-mouth from friends and family is the main source of information  today for US adult internet users when it comes to making decisions about physicians (65%) and hospitals (57%). (Lumin Collaborative 2007)

* 34% of adults in the US rank word-of-mouth as their first choice for information when it comes to making medical decisions. (USC Annenberg 2006)

* 42% of US adult Internet users say they get their information about healthcare companies and products from word-of-mouth sources, as compared to 30% who say the Internet, and 28% who say traditional media such as broadcast and cable TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, etc. (Lumin Collaborative 2007)

* 48% of health information seekers say their quest for information was undertaken on behalf of someone else, not themselves. (Pew Internet & American Life Project 2007)

* 75% of e-patients with chronic conditions say the information they found in their last online search affected a decision about how to treat an illness or condition; 69% say the information led them to ask a doctor new questions or to get a second opinion from another doctor; 57% say the information changed the way they cope with a chronic condition or manage pain; and 61% say they changed their overall approach to maintaining their health. (Pew Internet & American Life Project 2007)

* Also, worth noting: there’s a high degree of “badvocacy” among consumers when it comes to health and healthcare.  The category gets one of the lowest Net Advocacy scores in the Keller Fay Group’s TalkTrak index, which measures weekly WOM in the US.

* On the other hand, TalkTrak also shows that there are a high degree of people who regularly give advice and make recommendations to others when it comes to health and healthcare (Ed Keller and Brad Fay have labeled these advocates “ConversationCatalysts”).

So when we look at the healthcare landscape and advocacy today, the trend, if not the answer, seems clear.  Are we still reliant on doctors?  Is healthcare still too private and too sensitive?  Are we still too squeamish?  As Amy Winehouse might sing: no, no, no.   What we see here is that advocacy is playing a very important role in consumer decision-making about healthcare.  That there is extensive engagement and openness.  And a significant shift from the way things used to be not very long ago.  Upshot: this has a major affect on the way we need to communicate in healthcare today.  We have to pay attention to the vox populi, or ”dox” as it were, of the consumer who increasingly looks to others like themselves for doctoring and to the Web for medical advice and information — and acts on it.

Now, maybe that seems like an old hat no-brainer when it was so many years ago that Bob Dole first came into our living rooms to talk about ED (if you don’t know what that it is look it up; I’m not even comfortable writing it).  But it’s new, according to experts like Weber Shandwick’s global head of healthcare Laura Schoen.  The point she’s made to me is that the rise of advocacy in healthcare is really a revolution taking place, and at a time of high distrust and controversy for the industry (note the badvocacy bullet above).

Laura also helped me see how there’s a much bigger point to all this, one that goes beyond the hard facts and figures.  Chronic disease and deadly disorders disempower people.  They isolate and take away all hope.  And complex treatments can often be as daunting as the diagnosis.  Advocacy — the act of connecting with other individuals, being part of a community, socially interacting with others who understand “me,” helping others based on your own experience – is critically important to rebuilding patients’ self-esteem and restoring hope.  It goes well beyond just talk in healthcare; it can be a critical equalizer and key ingredient in recovery. 

With insights and a sense of purpose like this, the summit in Madrid promises to be a very interesting.  I am looking forward to it.