Wellness Has the Power to Take the Fear Out of Healthcare

By Margot Grover, Chief Strategy Officer at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness

The category of healthcare has reached a strategic inflection point, which has given rise to a new category: wellness. A cultural shift is well underway, and, as a result, the meaning of health and wellness is changing altogether.

As healthcare marketers, we must consider the broader context of a person’s well-being for every strategy we build and piece of work we create. Shifting the focus of our work away from just reducing illness toward helping end users achieve wellness is a more comprehensive and proactive approach to addressing healthcare barriers. By doing so, we can drive better patient health outcomes and change the relationship between patients, providers, and brands to take the fear out of healthcare.

Where Does This Fear Come From?

By focusing on the outward manifestations of ill health, the healthcare system tends to only treat the symptom. However, the symptom is often affected by other aspects of a person’s life, either directly or indirectly. This is due to many factors, including the increasing strain on healthcare professionals as they navigate overbooked schedules and antiquated structures and systems. As such, our interactions with the healthcare system can leave us feeling confused, misunderstood, and lost. It can be scary to receive treatment but never really feel well.

A patient-centric point of view may lead healthcare professionals to deeply examine the disease or illness presented to them at the moment in order to treat it. But adopting a person-centric point of view has the potential to inspire providers to look beyond the manifestations of ill health and explore a more holistic approach to wellness. For example, high blood pressure may be impacted by dissatisfaction at work. Diabetes might be exacerbated by a tendency to comfort eat. Low self-esteem or poor interpersonal relationships could be driving that desire to comfort eat. Every aspect of our complex lives can contribute to our overall health, but by focusing on the physical manifestations alone, we may never truly feel better.

Understanding Wellness

So, what does it mean to be well? What exactly is wellness? Wellness represents a multidimensional process through which individuals choose a more meaningful and fulfilling existence. There are six dimensions of wellness that, when considered, lead to a happier, healthier way of being.

1. Physical: Focusing on the body and its well-being, such as exercise, nutrition, and medical care.

2. Emotional: Addressing mental health, self-esteem, stress management, and emotional resilience.

3. Occupational: Finding fulfillment and satisfaction in work, career development, and achieving a work-life balance.

4. Social: Cultivating meaningful relationships, social connections, and a sense of belonging.

5. Intellectual: Stimulating the mind through learning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving.

6. Beliefs and Values: Finding meaning beyond the material world and exploring personal values, spirituality, and purpose.

Society is Demanding Wellness from All Categories

Society’s demand for wellness is pushing many categories outside of traditional health and wellness to make wellness a core part of their brand offering, from apparel and retail to beverage and auto.

Tesla has reshaped the auto industry through wellness, giving car-buyers the ability to do well by their sustainability values through the car that they drive.

Lululemon doesn't just sell activewear, they activate the emotional, beliefs, values, and habits that lead to wellness through community, fostering a sense of belonging and inspiration.

Companies like Blue Apron and HelloFresh are meeting the often unacknowledged wellness mealtime gap in busy, working modern households. Their services are allowing more and more households to realize the physical, social, and emotional wellness found only through mealtime with those we love, which is often lost through the time constraints of modern life.

How Pharma Brands Can Thrive in This New Wellness Reality

Pharma brands have a unique opportunity to adopt a more aspirational and positive approach to connecting with people and healthcare professionals.

Here are some ways pharma brands can distance themselves from the fear and avoidance associated with healthcare by focusing on wellness: 

1. Don’t think of your audience as patients; think of them as people.

2. Identify the human wellness aspiration that your brand can help people achieve.

3. Ask yourself, “If this was a traditional healthcare brand, how would it behave?” Then ask, “If this were a wellness brand, how would it behave differently?”

The intersection of healthcare and wellness represents an exciting and necessary evolution in how we approach health and healthcare marketing. As the concept of wellness continues to shape our culture, brands and businesses must adapt and leverage its potential for positive change, contributing to a world more focused on a holistic perception of well-being. The future of healthcare lies in wellness, a paradigm that encompasses not only the absence of illness but also the absence of fear. Wellness is a call for people and healthcare professionals to not just be okay but to do well.

Check out more of Margot’s thoughts on wellness through her article “Every Brand is a Wellness Brand: How Products Can Have a Positive Impact on Customers” published in Healthcare Business Today.