Including the Patient Perspective When Working With Media

Reporters are always looking to humanize stories coming out of our industry that can otherwise be dry and technical. It’s quite common to be asked by a journalist to speak with a clinical trial participant, for example.

This presents a dilemma for us communicators on many, many fronts, one of which being that sponsors should not know, much less be connected to, who’s in their trials.

How can we ethically and proactively identify sources who can speak from this perspective?

Patient advocacy organizations can sometimes provide the patient perspective itself or help identify an appropriate person.

And, be sure to maintain relationships with individual patients and caregivers from the community that may have been previously established when hosting guest speakers or for materials like community profiles.

Not to be overlooked are the trial sites, starting with a strong med affairs or clin ops relationship with the investigator and study coordinator. Meet early with the institution’s comms team. Ensure they know about the trial and science behind it. Brief them on the sponsor’s comms and media engagement plans. That way, you can refer reporters to your contact onsite and maybe even give them a head’s up about an imminent inquiry.

It’s a good idea to align in advance with all of these parties on when and how you might work with them to incorporate a patient perspective into your broader comms strategy for any given investigational therapy, particularly for the media engagement piece.

What’s been your experience working with media to capture the patient perspective?