A claims-based analysis found that 26 million doses of CDC-recommended vaccines were missed in 2020. The report, commissioned by GSK and conducted by Avalere Health, an Inovalon Company, investigated claims from commercial, managed Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, and Medicare fee-for-service Part B from January through November 2020. When compared to the same time frame for 2019, results revealed that 8.8 million vaccines for teenagers and 17.2 million for adults were missed.

Non-influenza vaccines in 2020 tracked at 13-35% lower for adolescents and 17-40% lower for adults when comparing against 2019 data. Influenza vaccines, which were analyzed independent of other vaccines due to the seasonality of the influenza virus, initially showed some “early gains” but “lagged as the season progressed” in 2020. According to the news release, “Influenza vaccination claims from August-September of the 2020-21 season exceeded the same months of the 2019-20 season, suggesting early heightened awareness of respiratory disease in 2020; however, those surges levelled off by October and then fell in November.”

The report does not that while the pandemic “compounded this problem”, vaccinations were “under-utilized for adults and in underserved populations” before COVID-19 emerged. An insight from the report also predicts that “this vaccination deficit is likely to continue to grow, particularly as the US saw a significant rise of COVID-19 cases after November 2020.” On May 12, 2021, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) updated previous guidance, issuing a recommendation to allow coadministration of COVID-19 vaccines with other vaccines; the previous recommendation was a 14-day waiting period between the vaccinations.

Vaccines analyzed in this research were: Influenza; Haemophilus influenzae (Hib); Hepatitis A; Hepatitis B; Human Papillomavirus (HPV); Meningococcal ACWY; Meningococcal B; Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR); Pneumococcal; Tetanus, Diphtheria, and Pertussis (Tdap); Varicella Zoster (Chickenpox); and Herpes Zoster (Shingles). Avalere Health is an Inovalon company, a leading provider of cloud-based platforms empowering data-driven healthcare.

In June 2018, the American Medical Association’s Annual House of Delegates meeting set out to devise a strategic plan that would “progress toward health equity.” The AMA Center for Health Equity was launched in April 2019, helmed by its first Chief Health Equity Officer, Aletha Maybank, M.D., M.P.H.. It was announced in May 2021 that a “three-year roadmap to plant the initial seeds for action and accountability to embed racial justice and advance health equity for years to come” would be put into action. The endeavor is structured by five strategic approaches: Embed equity and social justice; Build alliances and share power with historically marginalized and minoritized stakeholders; Ensure equity in innovation; Push upstream to address all determinants of health and root causes of inequities; and Foster truth, reconciliation, racial healing, and transformation.

As noted in the report, the AMA “seeks to pivot from ambivalence to urgent action”, acknowledging that “[t]o move forward, we must prioritize and integrate the voices and ideas of people and communities experiencing great injustice and historically excluded, exploited, and deprived of needed resources such as people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+, and those in rural and urban communities alike.” The report begins by addressing the background and history of inequalities and injustices in healthcare, including a non-exhaustive list of those conducted by the AMA, as well as creating a starting point of “definitions, concepts, and frameworks.” The next section of the report shifts to how the organization plans to change and evolve moving forward by recommending specific “theories, levers, and logic for change”, including countering the harmful and negative narratives in health, employing anti-racist work, and implementing intersectional approaches (race AND __). The report then details each of the five strategic approaches to embed racial and social justice in healthcare, before concluding with the AMA’s commitment to ensure accountability and effectiveness.

The AMA recognizes its role as a “national leader” should be leveraged “to lean into its influence and play a more prominent role in the current national reckoning on equity and justice both by using existing assets—relationships, training platforms, programs, advocacy, communication and marketing infrastructure—and creating new assets as levers for change.”

Click here to read full details and download the AMA’s Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity: 2021-2023.

It was announced recently that Vaccinate Your Family and Merck would be teaming up to launch a new public health campaign, Don’t Skip, to encourage people to keep up-to-date on all recommended vaccines. According to Merck’s news release, the PSA features actress, activist, and author Gabrielle Union-Wade alongside her husband, retired NBA all-star champion Dwyane Wade, and their family “during moments that reflect some of the realities of life during the pandemic, along with an important message: it’s okay to skip some things right now, but a visit to the doctor isn’t one of them.” With many patients postponing healthcare visits during the pandemic, the campaign seeks to bring awareness to the “potentially serious implications to national public health” and the importance of keeping up with vaccinations.

“The health and wellness of my family is my number one priority. Like so many other families, we’ve had to make some adjustments over the past year. But for us, we did not skip our kids’ well-visits and recommended vaccines,” said Union-Wade [in the news release]. “If there’s one thing the pandemic has taught us, it’s that public health matters and we all can do our part to help protect our families and each other. That’s why I’m encouraging parents to talk to their kid’s doctors now about getting back into the office to stay up to date with their kid’s recommended vaccinations.”

The timing of the campaign plans to take advantage of the reopening of many venues in time for summer as well as the return of doctor’s office visits, before the return to the school year in the fall. Don’t Skip features a 30-second spot and website, which focus on catching up on any missed visits or vaccinations during the pandemic, staying current on recommend vaccinations, as well as an overall return to routine healthcare and wellness visits.

As medications target more niche audiences, it can be difficult for pharmaceutical marketers to reach their sought-after sub-populations from the greater patient pool. Dan Wilmer, Chief Product Officer of InStep Health, detailed in an interview, shared yesterday, how partnering with DeepIntent allowed them to utilize cutting-edge data-driven capabilities for a multichannel brand campaign: “What [our industry is] doing as healthcare marketers is we’re finding the right patients that are appropriate for these very specific treatments. So I think that the exciting part is that the medicine is getting better than its ever been. The challenge is that those medications are for a narrower and narrower group of people. And that’s where healthcare marketers … are coming into the equation because we’re bringing … this education, this message of hope.”

Sharing a real-world example, Wilmer explained that when crafting a client’s campaign, InStep Health added a digital overlay component to their in-pharmacy and in-physician-office programs. That, coupled with DeepIntent’s HIPAA-compliant patient-modeled technology which looked at ICD 10 codes and NDC numbers, helped generate even greater lift for the brand. This model developed “very specific audiences based on that anonymized and tokenized data,” Wilmer explained in the video interview. When compared against the control group, metrics from third party research studies showed a “9:1 ROI” and “2x the average of all other digital media properties” when measuring audience quality related to digital targeting, he added.

Wilmer’s interview was featured in “Embracing the Future of Healthcare Marketing“, a thought leadership video series from DeepIntent and Beet.TV. DeepIntent, which celebrates its five-year anniversary today, launched the series in November 2020.

The Ad Council’s continued awareness campaign with the Alzheimer’s Association is being brought directly to patients and caregivers via a campaign extension partnership with Phreesia. According to the news release, in the 10 weeks post-campaign launch, “over half the people who engaged with the campaign as they checked in for a healthcare visit on Phreesia’s digital platform were likely to talk to a doctor about Alzheimer’s disease.” The campaign is scheduled to run through the end of 2021.

Patients can view a PSA – designed by Phreesia’s in-house creative team to highlight distinctions between “typical signs of aging and early symptoms of Alzheimer’s” – and then complete an optional survey about their knowledge of the disease as well as the campaign’s impact. “While more than two in three patients surveyed were aware that forgetting new information and becoming confused are symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s disease, patients were less familiar with other symptoms, such as challenges in completing tasks and naming objects or changes in judgement,” stated the news release. Additional resources can be emailed as a follow up to those interested, including “conversation starters for those wanting to address worries with family members and a 10-step action plan for concerned caregivers.”

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(Images courtesy of Phreesia.)

A multidimensional COVID-19 awareness and education campaign was unveiled this month by PatientPoint, the first project under the newly-merged PatientPoint and Outcome Health. In addition to educating about the COVID-19 vaccines, the campaign will also target vaccine-hesitant groups, including Black and Hispanic communities. According to the news release, “[t]he campaign’s marquee segment, What Happens Next?, represents a collaboration between PatientPoint and the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative’s national ‘It’s Up To You’ COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative.”

The PatientPoint campaign, which will also include ‘It’s Up To You’ assets, utilizes video and original educational content via waiting room screens and exam room touchscreens. To help engage with vaccine-hesitant populations, the news announcement shared that “[c]ampaign content was informed by the research and creative strategy behind ‘It’s Up To You’ and conversations with Black and Hispanic healthcare leaders including James Thompson, MD; Raymond G. Jacinto, PA-C; and Suzette McKinney, DrPH,MPH, all of whom are featured voices across campaign content appearing in doctor’s offices nationwide.”

In January, President Biden aimed to administer 100 million COVID-19 vaccination shots to Americans in the first 100 days that his administration had taken office. Initially seen as aggressive, that objective was met only 58 days in. In a recent speech, the president explained how this was achieved: “Using the power given to a President under the Defense Production Act, we expedited critical materials in vaccine production, such as equipment, machinery, and supplies.  We worked with vaccine manufacturers to speed up the delivery of millions more doses and brokered a historic manufacturing partnership between competing companies who put patriotism and public health first.” Last week in a press conference, President Biden doubled his goal to 200 million shots in 100 days.

Additionally, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a nearly $10 billion investment by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, with significant funding from the American Rescue Plan, “to expand access to vaccines and better serve communities of color, rural areas, low-income populations, and other underserved communities in the COVID-19 response. This funding will expand access to vaccines for vulnerable populations and increase vaccine confidence across the country.”

With a pledge of seeing 90% of U.S. adults eligible by April 19 and 90% being within five miles of a vaccination location, President Biden’s next phase of vaccine dissemination directs all states, tribes, and territories to make every U.S. adult eligible by May 1st. To help reach this new milestone:

• the number of vaccination sites will increase, including adding mass vaccination sites, community centers, local and federal retail pharmacies, and mobile clinics;
• more people will be able to provide and support vaccinations, including active duty troops, and “qualified professionals such as Dentists, advanced and intermediate Emergency Medical Technicians, Midwives, Optometrists, Paramedics, Physician Assistants, Podiatrists, Respiratory Therapists, and Veterinarians, as well as medical students, nursing students, and other healthcare students in the previously listed professions under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act”;
• the federal government will provide tools and resources to help individuals find a vaccine location more easily (including a federally-supported website and toll-free number), as well as provide technical support at the state level for states to improve their existing COVID-19- and vaccine-related websites.

It was announced earlier this month that PatientPoint had combined forces with Outcome Health to launch a new platform company, PatientPoint Health Technologies. Functioning under the PatientPoint brand, this merger amplifies doctor-patient interactions across the entire patient care journey and, as noted in the release, helps “meet the tech-enabled patient engagement needs of nearly 150,000 unique healthcare providers and impact roughly 750 million patient visits each year.” The new company plans for both organic growth as well as mergers and acquisitions to help “grow its provider base and to expand the suite of innovative, tech-enabled patient engagement solutions it can offer to its provider customers.”

Remarking how well CEO Matt McNally and COO Nandini Ramani turned around Outcome Health and rebuilt trust, PatientPoint’s CEO and Founder, Mike Collette also stated: “By leveraging the best talent and technology from both PatientPoint and Outcome Health, we will be well positioned to expand our suite of innovative patient engagement solutions to deliver improved patient outcomes and a more personalized, relevant patient experience as well as enhanced scale and efficiency for our healthcare sponsors.” He added, “Every key healthcare stakeholder wins with our unique business model: Patients achieve improved health outcomes and an enhanced patient experience, healthcare providers receive innovative, high-value patient engagement solutions at no cost or low cost, and healthcare sponsors that financially support our programs receive forecast-altering sales growth at a compelling ROI.”

PatientPoint’s current leadership will remain in place, leading the new platform company: Mike Collette as Chief Executive Officer; Linda Ruschau as Chief Client Officer; Pat O’Brien as Chief Financial Officer; and Chris Martini as Chief Provider Officer. Technology executives from Outcome Health, Glenn Keighley and Sean Barden, will join PatientPoint’s engineering and information technology teams.

Click here to read the full announcement.

With World Cancer Day on Feb 4, 2021, Ogilvy Health closed in on their year-long commitment to cancer awareness through their passion project, #EverydayMatters. DTC Perspectives spoke with two of the team members behind the campaign for its launch and again in late summer for an update. Coming full circle, we spoke with Deb Ciauro, Executive Creative Director; Sherry Novembre, Senior Vice President, Management Supervisor; and Kerianne Slattery, Senior Manager, Communications & Public Relations; to discuss the back-half of #EverydayMatters’ monthly initiatives.

“We’ve done a lot and it has really evolved nicely. We’ve always tried to attach [the work] to reflect current what’s happening in the world and make it resonate,” Ciauro informed. Keeping true with the motivation that regular, daily gains add up to a greater result, the team continued its work on focusing each month on a different cancer-related area, including:

• Protect Your Skin – skin cancer guidelines to protect your skin, including wearing sunscreen as well as masks in efforts to “sun safely”
• Pediatric Cancer Awareness – eCards geared to a variety of age groups to build awareness and support those affected by pediatric cancer, focusing on “the patient’s superpowered ability to fight”
• Make That Appointment Today!– a personal story from Slattery to emphasize the importance of regular wellness checks for National Wellness Month, and to not delay care as many may opt to do in the pandemic
• Electronic Medical Records – how EMRs can help oncology patients take control of their health info and better help them manage their healthcare journey
• Lung Cancer Awareness – celebrating advancements such as biomarker testing and immunotherapy is helping prevent, detect, and treat lung cancer
• Happy Holidays – an expression of appreciation for those important healthcare workers who are “deeply devoted to fighting cancer”
• Food for Thought – a look at how nutritional choices can impact overall health, including what foods can increase the risk of cancers or aid in your treatment to “help you take a bite out of cancer every day”

From #EverydayMatter’s social media promotions, Novembre shared that more than 147,000 impressions total were garnered and video content via social media promotions tallied nearly 6,500 views. Slattery shared that the launch video and skin cancer guidelines were among the top viewed content.

Ogilvy Health’s commitment to #EverydayMatters remained a priority, even during the pandemic, Ciauro explained. After pivoting and adjusting to their new normal, they all realized they could continue their work without compromising quality, so they kept at it. “We have adapted and this effort has adapted, like everything else. We figured out how to do it remotely and we’ve stuck with it. It’s been gratifying and we’re very thankful that we were able to still see this through,” she said. The team utilized every remotely accessible technology that they could – from online programs by the art team, to the latest smartphones to record tribute videos, to podcast equipment or even a spouse’s at-home music studio to record professional-grade voiceovers – they always ensured that the quality of the work would not be sacrificed.

In fact, this new normal helped create the overall look and tone of their production, which created a cohesive feel and consistent voice across the various campaign elements. The brand identity thus resulted in memorable and engaging efforts that truly resonated with patients and caregivers. Novembre also highlighted how the team members involved in #EverydayMatters were there because they wanted to be, as this was extracurricular and beyond client work. It also afforded opportunities for up-and-comers at the agency to participate, gaining knowledge and experience as well as providing them with exposure to the company’s top talents. Novembre expressed appreciation for their creative team, adding that this genuine desire to participate helped create the charm, authenticity, and personal touch needed for such communication with their target audiences.

While metrics and results showed the campaign to be a success, Ciauro, Novembre, and Slattery unanimously agreed that seeing the real-world impact #EverydayMatters had on consumers to be proactive with their healthcare was the biggest campaign achievement. Calling back to Bryan Minogue’s colonoscopy experience video for colorectal cancer awareness month, Novembre noted how well people responded to the video as personal journeys can provide help and understanding in a unique way. It was Bryan’s honest, candid disposition that not only encouraged viewers to schedule their own colonoscopy, but also helped prepare them on what they could expect during their own appointments.

As the team celebrates the one-year anniversary of #EverydayMatters, they remain steadfast in continuing into 2021 and beyond, as well as globally. They are transitioning to a bi-monthly schedule instead of monthly moving forward, which will allow them to spend more time on a cancer-related topic, Novembre said. They also wanted to be cognizant of not overwhelming audiences with content as people are often already receiving so much through their social channels in everyday life, especially after 2020, she added. The bi-monthly approach will also better accommodate global initiatives and advocacy partnerships since they will have more time to dedicate to each project and be able to involve more voices. One big overarching focus for 2021 will be “how to improve our reach and amplify getting these messages out,” she affirmed.

In looking back over the past year, Ciauro found not only the agency’s commitment and passion for #EverydayMatters, but also the meaningful purpose of sharing such important education and the real-time audience feedback to be particularly moving. “Knowing you are reaching people and creating that awareness is really gratifying,” she stated. Health has become such a primary topic of conversation, and they wanted to be sure that along with COVID-19, “cancer stayed just as important in that health conversation.”

Take a look back at all the team has accomplished with their year-long commitment to recognize that #EverydayMatters through their cancer awareness, education, and activation campaign.

In analyzing data from November and December for its sixth wave of research, the Commonwealth Fund, Phreesia, & Harvard found that, even though there was another surge of COVID-19 cases largely across the country, the number of outpatient practice visits remained stable. When compared to the baseline week of March 1, the November and December outpatient visits were “unchanged”.

The news release also highlighted that “several notable changes” were detected during that time period:

• Telemedicine experienced a modest increase of usage again. As seen in the chart below, just over 8% of visits were telemedicine visits.

• While those winter months typically see a rise in patient visits, “they were below the levels” in those two months of 2020; particularly among children, which showed a “substantial drop”. A typical-year shows a 7-10% increase above baseline for December visits among children ages 0-2. In December 2020, visits were 20-21% below baseline for that age group. A typical-year trend for December visits by children ages 3-5 shows a 6-10% increase above baseline. In December 2020, a 34-38% decrease was recorded for the age group. A typical-year trend for December visits by patients ages 6-17 range from 3% above baseline to 1% below baseline. In December 2020, an 18-25% below baseline was charted for the age group. Older age groups “remained more stable”.

While all specialties saw declines during the pandemic, the report queried, “One critical question is whether visit volumes will rise above the baseline level as we gain increasing control over the pandemic and people receive care that had been deferred.”