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When entering a building, do you inspect its foundation? While on a bridge crossing a river, do you and verify who designed and built the structure? Does your neighborhood have public transit or safe streets to get you to school or work?
All of this is your infrastructure. If your infrastructure is solid, you trust it and live your life without a thought. But some people, especially those in historically marginalized communities, do not trust our infrastructure because it has never been reliable.
As the pandemic resurges, responsible healthcare providers realize that rushed vaccine awareness campaigns failed to connect with many people. Perhaps outreach was poorly funded, or messaging was repackaged from general market ads and didn’t connect.
Efforts might have been diminished by limited relationships with diverse communities, thus decreasing reach. Without internal staff that is diverse at a strategic level and posing the right questions when creating a campaign, culturally informed insights can be difficult to access.
Structural inequities
Black and Latino communities are being hit the hardest by Covid-19. According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Health equity is still not a reality as Covid-19 has unequally affected many racial and ethnic minority groups, putting them at greater risk of getting sick and dying.”
President Joe Biden has included funds for community reinvestment in the $3.5 trillion infrastructure plan before Congress. While the president’s promises don’t put enough wealth-creating opportunity and money in the hands of Black and brown businesses or their communities, it’s more than just a start.
A lack of desire for change perpetuates discrimination in health care, housing, education, criminal justice and finance. The need for change is also invisible considering the redlining that takes place within the algorithms that fuel global commerce. Urban and rural communities with substantially obsolete education systems, no stores to buy fresh food, and negligent government representation are abundant, as are immigrant communities terrorized by threats of deportation.
What to consider when communicating vital health messaging
So, what can healthcare marketers, public health workers and government agencies do right now to save lives while also baking in processes for equity? An infrastructure of trust must be built to communicate vital health messages to diverse audiences—especially given the proliferation of misinformation driving many Americans to refuse vaccination.
Asking these fundamental questions and getting answers from your organization is a great place to start:
Always start with why: Why are you doing this equity work? Ask everyone to contribute to a note board, suggestion box or whiteboard. Be open for some painful truths.
What is diversity? Is the team talking about the same thing? How are you categorizing diversity? Placing gender, gender identity, language, nationality, disability and LGBTQ issues in a “diversity catch-all” is tone deaf.
Are there people in decision-making roles who look like those you are trying to reach? Do you need to hire more diverse staff, or do you need to acquire more diverse customers?
How will you measure change? Implementing equity initiatives is great, but it’s nothing without accountability.
Do you have brand and design guidelines? Ensure that your creative agency can articulate the need for equity throughout your brand. Is your equity work created by brainstorming for an hour in a conference room or adding Google Translate to your website to capture Spanish-speaking populations? These things will not have an impact or be effective.
Partner with like-minded leaders
An example of an effective partnership that recognized the need for cultural understanding is Zing Health and Oak Street Health, both based in Chicago.
Their strategic diverse, and multicultural alliance addressed low levels of trust in marginalized Black and Latinx communities by Oak Street Health providing Covid-19 vaccines to all Zing Health members.
Zing was founded by two Black physician entrepreneurs, Dr. Eric Whitaker and Dr. Kenneth Alleyne, to address social determinants of health and reduce healthcare disparities among historically underserved populations. Oak Street Health and Zing Health share a common mission: to address health inequities and misinformation that exist in the U.S. It’s a winning combination, and one that can be modeled across America.
It is critical that Black and Latinx voices are part of the solutions that address the most pressing issue of our time: survival of our communities through the pandemic.
Marketers can more effectively reach a diverse audience, while helping their organizations become recognized leaders in health equity, by crafting the right message, with the right people and the right organizational partners.
