WASHINGTON, DC — Communicators need to ‘get comfortable with being uncomfortable’ as they rebuild trust in healthcare, PRovokeGlobal delegates heard at the summit last week.

Sarah Aspalch, SVP external affairs at Bluebird Bio, said healthcare has gone from being the hero of the pandemic to being deeply mistrusted, particularly in the US as the nation heads to the polls to elect the next president.

“We have a clear imperative to build back belief,” she told Mathew Shearman, chair of APCO’s global health practice, as the duo discussed the power of partnerships in improving health. “It’s not so much what you say but who you work with to deliver that message,” Shearman agreed.

Healthcare communicators should look to create “uncommon partnerships” and be clear on their aims, whether that is raising awareness or affecting behaviour change. “It’s great to raise awareness of getting Covid and flu vaccinations, but where are we actually driving people to receive them?” Aspalch said.

She cited her work at Bluebird Bio with sickle cell disease and said creating partnerships with the community required “transparency, trust and being in it for the long haul.”

‘We didn’t show up and say we’re going to have a drug approved in six months, we worked together for years, close to a decade, to really listen.”

In terms of creating successful partnerships, Aspalch advised communicators to embrace healthy tension, and be clear about communicating what can’t be achieved as well as what can.

She said healthcare risked becoming “a victim of its own success,” citing a company that used shopping data to target pregnant customers to build brand loyalty, inadvertently disclosing pregnancies to family and friends before the person in question had shared that information. “It floored me that data could be used that way,” she said.

And she highlighted an opportunity for healthcare communicators to find the right partners for older generations, “where they are turning to social media and there’s huge feelings of isolation.”