Hello everyone, and welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.
Sara Payne [:I'm your host, Sara Payne, a health marketing strategist at Inprela Communications, and I'm bringing you fascinating conversations with some of the industry's top marketing minds. On today's episode, we're going to discuss how health care brands can leverage thought leadership to reshape public perceptions, influence behavior change, and become architects of a health revolution. In today's marketing mix, thought leadership plays a pivotal role in empowering consumers to make informed decisions about their health. And on the b to b side, thought leadership can help accelerate the adoption of new technologies by health care providers. To chat with me about this topic, I'm thrilled to welcome Emily Hansen, who is senior director of the resensation program at AxoGen. Specializing in advocacy and education, Emily helps breast cancer patients and their surgical care teams understand the prevalence of numbness after mastectomy and what can be done to address it. In the work Emily and her team are doing at AxoGen, she's helping to create a consumer health movement to increase the quality of life for breast cancer survivors and previvors. She's leading some really amazing work that's making a positive impact on so many lives.
Sara Payne [:Welcome, Emily.
Emily Hansen [:Thank you so much, Sara. I'm happy to be here.
Sara Payne [:Well, before we kick this off, I did wanna mention that Emily and I have known each other for a very long time. I think Emily and I figured it was somewhere around 16 years ago that we first met, and we have partnered together on many PR and thought leadership campaigns throughout the years. Emily's always been on the client side and me always on the consultant side. We have a long history together and mad respect for one another. So if you notice a casual nature to our conversation, it's because we've also become really good friends over the years, And I I honestly can't say enough good things about her. She's incredibly smart and talented and also really fun to be around. So I'm just absolutely thrilled to have Emily on the podcast. So let's dive in.
Sara Payne [:Emily, I wanted to start, with AxoGen's goal, which is to make sure that every woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer knows how common it is to experience numbness in their chest after a mastectomy and how that resulting numbness can negatively impact quality of life. I'd like to just spend a minute there if we can. But I have to admit that before we started working together, I I didn't know that somebody could experience numbness after a mastectomy. So can you talk a little bit about the issue of numbness and why it happens?
Emily Hansen [:Yes. I think that's a great point too because before I started working in this space, I also did not know that numbness was so prevalent. But I've learned a lot since then and I think, you know, there's so much information out there about breast cancer. There's an entire month dedicated to awareness around it. There's a lot of pink ribbons, you know, and a lot of support, which I think is great, but there are definitely some gaps as it relates to care. And when I think about the fact that there are nearly 4,000,000 breast cancer survivors living in the United States today, how many of them are likely experiencing this challenge of numbness or pain or the combination of both, I think there's really an opportunity to address it. So the simplest way to explain why numbness happens is we all have peripheral nerves running throughout our body. And when they're working fine, everything's great.
Emily Hansen [:Most of us can't even really imagine what it's like to not have them working like normal. But when you have a mastectomy procedure or surgery of any kind and you're going to cut the skin and remove the tissue, those nerves run throughout the entire breast and so they're gonna be cut and removed along with the breast. And even though, you can have a reconstruction to recreate, like, the look and the shape and size of a breast, If nothing is done to repair those nerves during the breast reconstruction procedure, it will be completely numb. And the simplest way to try to provide an analogy for people is many of us have experienced that temporary numbness after a dental appointment. If you imagine that across the surface area of your chest but also being permanent, it can be a really debilitating thing that impacts, quality of life, and it can even impact the safety for patients. There can have injuries like burns and cuts and things like that or not even being able to feel your clothing. It's really disorienting. So there's a lot of opportunity out there to help educate patients about this challenge and the clinical community.
Sara Payne [:Do we know, Emily, how prevalent numbness is for for those who've gone through a mastectomy? Do we do we have any sense for what that prevalence looks like?
Emily Hansen [:We do. The published literature show that anywhere from 40 to 80% of people that undergo breast cancer surgery and mastectomy are gonna have either some, like, partial numbness all the way to complete numbness after the procedure. So the extent of it may vary person to person, but it's pretty consistent, and I would say that's pretty true in the 2 or 3000 people that I've talked to in the past couple of years as well. It's really common. It's just not really talked about.
Sara Payne [:Yeah. For sure. So you touched a little bit on what that experience can be like for women who are experiencing numbness. You talked about, you know, possibility for for some safety issues with burns and and things like that. How does numbness impact quality of life for people?
Emily Hansen [:Yeah. It can really have a huge barrier, because when you're dealing with numbness, even if it's temporary in your mouth, if you think of that and how disorienting that feels even for just a few hours, What it does is it disrupts your proprioception, which is your ability to understand where your body is in space. So many women will describe that, it feels like their breasts are much larger than they are because they can't feel the border of it. It impacts the ability for everyday activities like feeling a hug from a loved one, child, friend, partner, like I mentioned, not being able to feel your clothing. It can be, you know, even disorienting to try to exercise or go and do yoga. Can't feel things like a seat belt across your chest or how warm the water is in the shower and you have to be careful about that. And, you know, if we're walking through doorways or things like that, it's actually easy to kind of bump your chest if you can't feel it, and you end up with bruises and other types of damage as well on the
Sara Payne [:skin. So we know that the issue is numbness, and, obviously, you you were working in your work at AxoGen to increase awareness about this issue. Can you tell us a little bit about your marketing objectives at a high level? Again, obviously, raising awareness is important, but can you elaborate on your specific objectives?
Emily Hansen [:So I really think of the marketing objectives for this space kind of in a 3 pronged approach. The first one is raising awareness of the problem and that's in multiple kind of communities. So that's with the patient community and even the general population, the health care clinician community and also with advocacy groups that are already involved in the breast cancer space. And so we're focused on raising awareness about the problem, trying to provide some education around nerve injuries and what can be done about them. And then also we're trying to work at the same time with those that are involved in kind of the health care circle as it relates to breast cancer. So if you're diagnosed, it's not just one clinician that you're meeting with and many times you're gonna have 7 or 8 different people involved in that care and so it's really, I feel like, our job to help make sure that everybody has some level of awareness because I think the sooner that somebody that's diagnosed with breast cancer or just at high risk in evaluating your options, The sooner in that journey that they learn about this, the more time that they have to process it because, let's face it, when you're diagnosed, you know, with a life threatening disease, the top priority is, of course, gonna be survival. But your expectations may change as your increase for survival improves throughout that journey. And that's when those things start to become more and more important really thinking of it can save my life, but also what's the quality of my life going to be in the long run.
Sara Payne [:So we talked about how awareness is not particularly high amongst consumers as you and I both personally experienced, right, before learning, you know, and working with AxoGen, what is the awareness level? You talked about sort of the circle of sort of the the care team that surrounds somebody. What are what is the awareness level amongst the various sort of health care providers that would interact with somebody who has who's experiencing a breast cancer diagnosis?
Emily Hansen [:Yeah. It's a great question. I think at least based on the work that we've been doing over the past couple of years, it seems to be quite low outside of the plastic reconstructive surgeon. And there may be several reasons for that. You know, every group has their own kind of specialty training, so they're not all going to be focusing on peripheral nerves. And then I also think part of it has to do with the patient journey. And so as you finish various steps of your care, you know, and you're going through treatment, you may not be seeing some of those same health care providers anymore as you move on to other ones. And so there's somewhat of a gap, I think, in a feedback loop for patients to be able to articulate kind of what they're going through and being able to distinguish what's different from post surgical pain or numbness and what's different about this kind of chronic or permanent numbness that exists.
Emily Hansen [:The other thing that I would say is, you know, even at the surgical surgical oncologist level, I think there's some awareness that nerves are gonna be cut and that sensation will be lost, but for so long, there was nothing that could be done about it. So I feel like it wasn't really discussed that much because it seemed as though there is a problem with no solution and just something that, you know, breast cancer patients are kind of forced to accept as part of their journey.
Sara Payne [:Yeah. And I so great point. So I guess we haven't directly addressed what that solution looks like. And not that I wanna spend a ton of time getting into the science of this because, you know, this is more of a podcast focused on marketing. But I do think it's important to at least, touch on that briefly. So what does that solution look like for folks to, that are experiencing numbness?
Emily Hansen [:The technique the surgical technique is called resensation, and what's involved in that is taking a process nerve allograft, so that's donated tissues similar to if you're an organ and tissue donor on your license, you know, all of your major organs can be donated to other people. The same thing can happen with your nerves. And AxoGen, the company that I work for is focused on peripheral nerve repair and they've developed a process to cleanse those nerve grafts to remove any genetic material that keep that important structure intact, and that's what's so important. So that nerve allograft really serves as, like, an extension cord between the nerves that are cut in your breast tissue. And so a plastic reconstructive surgeon is going to go in during the, breast reconstruction surgery and surgically reconnect that nerve graft to the nerves in your chest. And then over time, your nerve can regenerate through that nerve graft, potentially restoring the signals, back to your brain so that you get the messages that you're feeling in your chest. And then the graft actually becomes part of the patient's own body and there's no need to take any type of, inhibitor drugs or anything like that. It's a a really amazing technology, and it's been used all over the body for more than 20 years with great success.
Sara Payne [:So fascinating. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So you talked a little bit about, again, the the audience and this sort of circle of of care providers that will surround a patient. You talked about the plastic surgeon. Really, kind of, the awareness is highest amongst that group because they are then the ones that are doing this reconstruction surgery and then the the allograft surgery. So I'm probably gonna get the terms wrong here, but that would be their their job. So awareness is highest there.
Sara Payne [:But this is a classic example, Emily, of health marketing where there's so many different stakeholders that have different awareness levels, and then, therefore, the messaging, right, and the strategies that you need to deploy are gonna look very different depending on on who your target audience is. So as you guys look at your marketing program, is do you sort of prioritize b to b over b to c, or do you see them, very equal to one another when you're when you're looking at the your overall marketing mix?
Emily Hansen [:I I think currently, we're in a stage where it's all equal opportunity education. So we're trying to educate general consumers at the same time as we're trying to educate very, focused surgical specialties. And we do, try to focus on different parts of the message to those audiences and how we deliver it because, you know, this can be a very technical and complicated, discussion with people. And if it's too much information at once or too hard to digest, I think people have a tendency to just tune it out because it's like, you know, one more thing with a lot of information. So we focus on telling stories using patients, you know, either who have had the recent station surgery and they can talk about their experience and their recovery. And patients of all different types that have had different types of reconstructions, different age groups, I think it's really important to be brought there. But we also focus on working with some of our clinical partners to be able to help them share through their voice to their peer audiences. So we're specifically working with breast surgical oncologists and those are the ones who are performing the mastectomy procedure and even though they're not doing the resensation technique, you know, their contribution to that process is really important in terms of how they perform it.
Emily Hansen [:It's almost like making sure that the artist is gonna have a nice as canvas as possible for the reconstruction. So we really try to teach them about the problem and make sure that they're aware of it and then educate them on some of the basic nerve anatomy in the breast and how to collaborate with plastic surgeon partners. And then on the other side, we're also working with some of the plastic surgeons to educate their peers. You know those who are on the forefront that have been doing this procedure for 5 years or 10 years, sometimes longer, and sharing their experience in their community and helping to get more people to understand what that problem is.
Sara Payne [:You've been running an awareness campaign for a few years now. And can you talk about which activities you found to be most successful in achieving your objectives?
Emily Hansen [:It's a combination of a lot of the PR work that we're doing to get education out to multiple different types of outlets and have, you know, different ways of telling the story, bringing new voices in. And then we also do a lot of direct to patient, type of education. So we have a website called resensation.com, and I mentioned the need to really try to simplify things for people. And so we've tried to make very simple animations, so there's no scary surgeon photos on there and things like that to help people understand what what happens during the mastectomy, what is the procedure like, and how is that going to work and been building out content. We also partner with some advocacy groups like the Breasties who are very vocal in this space and, you know, many of them are, you know, either recently undergoing these surgeries. Some of them have had surgery in the past and they don't have feeling and they can really relate to this. And they're very passionate about it and not just sensation, but, you know, all of these advancements in, breast cancer care and how to get the word out so that more people kind of facing these challenges in the future are gonna have a better chance and a more complete recovery.
Sara Payne [:I'm glad you went there because I was I was gonna go there as well. This the breast cancer survivor community is very tight knit and very supportive of one another, which obviously represents a a tremendous opportunity for you to to link arms there and, you know, really sort of help get the message out through that community. Can you tell us a little bit more? Do you have any tips for other folks in terms of leveraging patient advocates and how to do that well? Because I know that, you know, it's definitely something we wanna be sensitive of because these are definitely it's not just like an influencer, right, where you're gonna pay them to help get your marketing message out there. This is very personal for them, And you certainly don't want to appear as a brand as though you are sort of you know, taking advantage of their their personal experience. So can you talk about sort of what how you how you view that in terms of getting that right when you're working with a patient advocate?
Emily Hansen [:That is a great point, because they should not be treated like influencers because they're not the same. They they have the lived experience of going, you know, through their own procedures and really being able to articulate in their own words kind of what that means. At first, I have to be honest, I was a little bit nervous about it because, you know, it's sort of a scary thing to talk about. I was a little bit nervous that, you know, some of these survivors and previbers may be disappointed that they didn't have this procedure and may not be as open to talking about it. But what we found was, you know, reaching out to them through these different groups and just doing some of the basic education on what happens. Number 1, they're grateful for the education because they didn't know and they understood it, and then they feel more empowered to help educate their peers and try to put this forward. And I think it's also a balance of knowing when, you know, it matters to use your brand and when it doesn't. And I feel pretty strongly about not needing to always have the resensation brand front front and center.
Emily Hansen [:In some situations, it makes sense or when we're directing people to, like, our surgeon locator so that they can try to find a surgeon in their area and schedule a consultation. But really just trying to focus on what the issue is so that then we're able to position a solution even. And I feel like there's a lot more openness to that, and the community at large seems very, very willing to try to pay it forward for future generations. I mean, I talk to people all of the time. Half the time when I'm traveling, I run into somebody that asks me what I do on a plane or something like that, and they'll they're very open about their procedure and they're willing to, you know, answer questions that I have for them about how does this impact them, what does it feel like. And actually, all of that has helped us create better educational tools, to reach more people. So I think it's just been a really organic, kind of partnership working with these, survivors and pre vivors.
Sara Payne [:Yeah. So one of the tips that I'm that I'm hearing from you there is that it's really important to focus on the issue. Yeah. And let their voice come through versus it being the the brand. And, I think some some companies and some brands struggle with, you know, when does the brand need to lead? Because, you know, I'm doing this to to raise awareness for my brand. You know, why would I want my brand to take the back seat, versus the issue? And I think it's really smart. What you all are recognizing here is that there's a tremendous amount of potential and and willingness and interest to get the word out, raise education and awareness with inside of this survivor community, but it does require prioritizing the issue and and letting the the brand sort of take the back seat.
Emily Hansen [:Completely agree. If it was all about us, and you don't take the opportunity to help educate about the issue, you know, it's sort of like you're trying to put a puzzle piece in where it doesn't really fit. Can't just go out there and talk about a solution when people don't, you know, understand and accept that there's a problem out there first.
Sara Payne [:Creating a health movement certainly doesn't happen overnight. Do you view this as a long term journey that you're on as a brand and as a company?
Emily Hansen [:A 100%. I will say sometimes it's, a bit of a challenge, you know, with executive leadership and helping them understand how the the PR and media strategy really fits into the overall commercial plan because it isn't just a short term thing. It's not like you can just get, you know, a few placements here and there and pat yourself on the back and say, great. The word is out. We're done. So I really looked at it kind of year over year. How do we build momentum? How do we tell deeper stories? How do we, you know, collaborate together with with you and your team to come up with new ideas, fresh angles, bringing new voices, you know, because people are diagnosed every day. Right? So even all the great PR that we've done in the past couple of years, people don't necessarily go back in time and, like, look for an article, you know, from a couple of years ago.
Emily Hansen [:So I feel like it is something that you need to invest in regularly if it is gonna be part of your strategy. It's not really a dabble approach or, like, putting out a press release occasionally on the wire.
Sara Payne [:Yeah. 2 questions on on that. I'm gonna come back to the executive piece in in a moment. But, you know, so many companies, I think, you know, want everyone to know about this really important thing related to their health. And they're you know, they come to us and say, let's get this story on Good Morning America. And and some people think that once you've gotten that sort of big national story, which which obviously helps, does a tremendous amount to really help raise awareness in a big way. But it's almost as if then they think the work is done, that you've made it. What do you, what do you think about that? I mean, it sounds like you think this is about building momentum and continually beating that drum.
Emily Hansen [:You know, a placement on the Today Show or Good Morning America is great. I sort of equate that to like an EpiPen. It's like, it gives you a great adrenaline boost, but maybe you're going to get 20 minutes life out of it. And so you have to think about what's the rest of your plan, you know, whatever your maintenance plan is. You know, even if you're thinking about the, the realm of your life, what's the actual diet? What are the things that you're doing consistently? You know, that seems to be a theme across all types of things is that consistency is sometimes the most important. It's not that everything, you know, needs to be as big of a a hit as like the today show right but continuously being out there being front and center. I think is so much more important and helps you build momentum. And we've seen that also translate into search engine optimization on our website and things like that.
Emily Hansen [:So it all kind of works together. It's like an ecosystem as opposed to just chasing those sort of quick highs, which to your point aren't great, but, you know, sometimes they're few and far between and there's so much happening in the media all the time. It can be hard to to even fight for those opportunities really regularly.
Sara Payne [:Yeah. So I was gonna go I was gonna ask you what evidence you've seen, that the the movement, this health movement and awareness around numbness is growing. Again, you know, executive teams want that evidence that this work is paying off, that the money investment you're making in raising awareness is paying off. Can you talk a little bit more about the evidence that you're seeing? And and, obviously, the it sounds like the sort of layered approach to increasing awareness has helped boost your your results in search, for folks out there who might be looking for solutions. What else are you seeing?
Emily Hansen [:It's amazing to me. So it's just 5 years that I have been in this role and looking at the change in the trajectory over time. I mean, we've increased our organic and direct traffic on our website more than a 1000%, which is pretty incredible. We also look at things such as what is the time spent on our websites, looking at average view time, and then, of course, conversions. So we're we're trying to see how many visitors are looking at the surgeon locator and also calling people from the surgeon locator, and we can certainly tell that's working. I can also tell just in how many more procedures are happening. So I think those are all really good indicators that it's working. We're also seeing some other things that are a little bit more anecdotal, but, you know, surgeons that I may have met, you know, 4 years ago that didn't really believe this was an issue, those surgeons are now coming to us asking to be trained on the procedure because patients are asking about it, and if they don't offer, those patients are looking for someone else who will.
Emily Hansen [:So I think that's, you know, probably some of the most compelling evidence that you can have even though sometimes it's a little bit harder to quantify. We really are seeing success continuing to work the plan as we're
Sara Payne [:Yeah. Yeah. So these metrics, that you're mentioning, you know, both, you know, more specific qualitative metrics, but also the anecdotal ones. I'm sorry. Quantitative metrics, but then the anecdotal ones as well. Are those resonating with with the executive team? Are they do they look at that, you know, right alongside you and the marketing team and say, yes. This is this is a success. This is what we wanna see.
Emily Hansen [:They do. And I think I've made a a direct habit of when we share our PR wins. Right? You know, all the impressions and things like that. And then sharing what's actually happening kind of simultaneously is really important because they don't necessarily know what it means to say that, you know, in 5 years we had more than 650,000,000 impressions. They're like, I don't know what that is. Right? And that's not their world. That's okay. So I try to make it more real for them and be able to translate that into, you know, how many opportunities people have had now with all of this work to learn and and many times be, you know, touched by the information more than once and then how that's translating into what's important to us.
Emily Hansen [:And and we can tell people are actually searching resensation by name, which I think is great. Couple years ago, there wasn't any searching going on at all for anything with, like, chest numbness or breast neurotization or anything like that.
Sara Payne [:That's really cool. It sounds like you're you're really do a thoughtful job of of bringing your marketing metrics alongside of business impact, business performance, and that it is it is resonating. I think that, sometimes, you know, executives might agree with you that they want the long term investment. We were talking earlier about, is this a long game? Is this a journey? Yeah. And it is a long term investment. They might agree to that when you're talking about the annual goals for the program. But, you know, there's certainly that pressure to demonstrate kind of immediate impact on business growth, whether it's monthly or quarterly. So how do you keep the executive team honest, and allow the organization to stay focused on the long term goals when there's also this pressure for for short term performance
Emily Hansen [:as well? It was more challenging, you know, earlier on. And I think in those earlier days, we had to really do a bit more modeling and being able to show them kind of scenarios of how this work is translating into increased patient volumes. We also work to communicate this even with the surgeons that we work with so that their understanding of how much more traffic is actually coming to them that they didn't even realize, like, coming from below here. So I think trying to come up with some sort of model or different assumptions that you can use to be able to connect, you know, this investment in PR and the type of results that we're getting really are kind of helping to feed the pipeline, if you will, in terms of consumer information.
Sara Payne [:Well, I just have to say what what you guys are doing is so cool, and it sounds like it really is making an impact on raising awareness amongst consumers. And then as you said, increasing patient referrals for for your clinicians as well. And the executives are are definitely seeing the impact as well. So so kudos to you and your team for all this work that you're doing on an ongoing basis. Now I'd like to I'd like to shift a little bit to a special segment that we call the collective quick fire. It's a fun way to get some valuable nuggets of of insight from you before we end the episode. My first question I've got 5 questions. My first question for you, Emily, is what topic you do you think is overhyped in health marketing?
Emily Hansen [:Oh, that's a good one. It's gonna kill me to say it, but, I mean, to me, just in general, it's the social media. And maybe it's just because the business that I'm that I'm in, that's sort of a little bit less. But all of the TikTok, maybe it's just not my generation yet, or maybe it's being in a really regulated type of market that we just don't have the flexibility to do that. Maybe I'm just a little jealous of the others. They get to do all these fun creative things, and, for us, we're not able to do it.
Sara Payne [:Yeah. Yeah. So just context for folks, we're obviously in a highly Reagan regulated environment here. And so there can be challenges that brands face in terms of, how they approach social media. Next question. What do you outsource versus what do you keep in house?
Emily Hansen [:We do outsource our PR and media, of course, and then also some of the creative work with the agency that we do. I I feel like our brand aesthetic, you know, has a really good feel. It's really strong. And so when when I want to create new tools or resources, I wanna call on them because I'm really looking for continuity in that brand. And to me, it's worth it to do that.
Sara Payne [:Leads or awareness, which one reigns supreme for you?
Emily Hansen [:It's awareness for me because I think that's what you have to really focus on before you can just start counting, like, lead generation.
Sara Payne [:And this one I we've already touched on, but I I'm gonna ask it anyway. Short term results or long term investment?
Emily Hansen [:For me, it's all a long game. I don't do anything for short term, but I I also feel like, you know, trying to change a standard of care in healthcare or any space, you have to be willing to play the long game. It's it's so rare just when you think of, you know, the speed that everything moves, social media, those things move fast, but when it comes to legislative change and, you know, how many people it takes, to really create a movement, it's all about that long game. You gotta you gotta buy into it.
Sara Payne [:Last question. What's the best podcast episode or book on either leadership or marketing that you've consumed recently? I know you do a lot of traveling. So
Emily Hansen [:You know, I'm always a fan of the Gallup podcast. It's near and dear to my heart. I feel like they, you know, have great, research backed information, and they have great, leadership and coaching webinars, podcasts, and you can definitely find me tuning into those, trying to always get some new nuggets of information.
Sara Payne [:Yeah. That's a great one. Well, thank you so much, Emily, for for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Where can listeners go for more information about the re sensation program? I know you mentioned the URL earlier, but if you could repeat that again, that would be great.
Emily Hansen [:Of course. You can find more information at resensationdot com. We have lots of educational animations, tons of information, to make it easy to understand, and a surgeon locator if you're in a position where you might need to find somebody near you or know somebody else that may need to find somebody.
Sara Payne [:Awesome. So many great insights today. If you all are feeling inspired, please do us a favor and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for being part of the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence because the future of health care depends on it. We'll see you next time.