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Effectively & Meaningfully Engaging Underserved Patient Communities

Arguably the most important (and oftentimes trickiest) task a pharma marketer faces is crafting content that successfully resonates with their target audience. This can be especially challenging when working within a rare disease and/or underserved patient population, such as sickle cell disease. So what really makes all the difference in how we connect with our target patient populations?

RIESTER RX recently had the opportunity to share our perspective on this topic during FiercePharma’s 2024 Digital Pharma Innovation Week. Using our sickle cell case study as an example, Global Blood Therapeutics (GBT; now Pfizer) approached us to conduct research and develop a market-shaping campaign to increase awareness of sickle cell prior to the launch of the first-ever therapy targeting the root cause of the disease – Oxbryta – to the market.

RIESTER RX’s approach consisted of ongoing in-depth research and continued optimization to ensure the learnings were relevant prior, during and post launch. Click below to hear more about the insights we learned from patients, caregivers and stakeholders and how we identified key challenges the population faces.

THE CHALLENGE:

Armed with insights, our strategy evolved a bit as we understood we needed to first build trust and generate credibility within this patient population to transform patients’ thinking around long-term disease management. Watch and learn more about how our communications strategy synergized unbranded and branded efforts for maximum market penetration.

THE APPROACH:

So how do we apply our learnings and the success of this campaign to other disease areas? Hear our five key considerations when targeting underserved patient communities:

APPLYING THIS MODEL TO OTHER PATIENT POPULATIONS:

Whether you’re navigating a patient population as niche as sickle cell disease or as common as arthritis, we’ve applied this model successfully across multiple therapeutic areas. Our goal is twofold: to elevate patients’ voices as well as drive awareness and foster empathy among the general population to improve positive outcomes for all.

Contact us if you have any questions or need help with an upcoming project!

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