MARKETING
Building Inclusive Web and Social Media Content for the Transgender Community
UVA Health has carefully crafted its online strategy to serve a patient population long marginalized by the health care field.
For transgender patients, a visit to the doctor can be fraught with fear and anxiety, even at the most welcoming hospital systems. Health care marketers play a crucial role in quelling these concerns and connecting in a way that’s thoughtful and non-exploitative.
UVA Health has grappled with these issues in Virginia. Despite training employees on LGBTQ-inclusive care and employing a committee and student services dedicated to this population, the Charlottesville institution has still faced challenges. Doctors, security guards and cafeteria workers sometimes misgender patients. Staffers have also called residents the wrong pronouns, while in another instance, nurses failed to recognize two lesbian team members as partners.
“The whole experience, from walking through the doors of a hospital, can feel like a minefield of vulnerable moments,” said Amy-Sarah Marshall, an online content strategist with the University of Virginia. “You’re going to have the wrong name used, or even have jokes made about you, with no control over what people do to you. Our challenge as marketers is overcoming those fears, doubts and expectations.”
Marshall and colleagues have carefully crafted a social media campaign to build influence and reach potential patients. They’re producing early success reaching nearly 11,000 viewers on one recent video related to LGBTQ parenting myths, with 70% coming from targeted search terms such as “transgender” and “puberty blockers.” The video was viewed about 45 seconds longer than average and UVA saw “huge” organic growth. A focus on understanding and embracing these patients helped produce early wins.
“We worked hard to get the empathy piece right,” Marshall said. “That’s the first thing we want patients to experience when they read one of our webpages because we want them to know they are in the right place.”
Getting Started
Becoming familiar with this audience was one of the first steps, said Marketing and PR Specialist Aleksandra Golota. Trans patients have long faced discrimination, rejection and even abuse from medical institutions. These encounters can have detrimental effects. Nearly 30% of trans people have been refused care because of their gender identity one survey found, while more than half reported provider discrimination.
“They have a very deep-seeded and well-founded distrust, expecting that providers are not going to understand their specific health care issues,” Marshall said. “That’s the audience we’re trying to convince to give us one more chance, so to speak. Overcoming distrust that is very, very deeply engrained was an important theme as we started to create content.”
UVA Health recently formed a gender advisory group, an avenue to start gathering feedback from patients and providers. They have two groups, one for providers and another for patients, that can provide feedback. The system started to build momentum as it rolled out a new electronic health record system to address pronouns, required training for every employee to understand proper terminology, and hired its first-ever chief diversity officer. Patient experience representatives have also become more attuned to negative feedback gathered through surveys, social media and other channels, Golota noted.
UVA Health made its strategic marketing pitch in October 2020 with a plan focused around three areas:
- Optimizing content for those seeking care – including adding pronouns to providers’ website profiles, configuring for search engines and updating patient collateral.
- Developing additional assets – such as patient story videos, photo shoots and program overviews.
- Growing patient volumes – through physician outreach, search engine marketing, community partnerships and social media advertising.
Marketers pitched the third item to leadership with a $54,000 budget, the bulk of which would go toward search engine tactics. But Golota wanted to focus on optimization and digital assets first, given ongoing access issues and a lack of space for its LGBTQ services.
Videos became one of marketing’s initial focuses, and Golota and colleagues sought outside help to execute their vision.
“We started thinking about the images that could communicate trust visually and wanted to make sure our partners understood the work and sensitivity of this patient population,” she said. “We would encourage others to seek vendors who are also inclusive so that they don’t make patients or providers feel uncomfortable in any way.”
Lights, Camera, Action
UVA Health went to work producing a series of videos highlighting its programs and patients. One focused on an individual named Charley Burton who is receiving gender-affirming treatments through the system, including a recent hysterectomy and double mastectomy.
In the interview, Burton recalled a UVA nurse asking some of the “most beautiful, poignant” questions, that made him feel safe during his care. “It was just total respect,” he said.
Their producer met for an hour with Burton to understand his story beforehand. Additional meetings occurred with the photographer and filming crew to “make sure we were all on the same page,” Golota said. The UVA team also let Burton review the video and kept in contact throughout the process to make sure he was comfortable.
“This was a collaboration, and that just is so important especially with people who have felt so disempowered in their relationship with our medical establishment,” Marshall said.
A second video highlighted the health system’s entire LGBTQ care program and team of experts. While a third picked the brain of Mary Sullivan, an outreach coordinator at the Transgender Teen Health Center. She discussed five myths to reconsider when one’s child is transgender. The video has garnered growing interest from search engines, along with Facebook and Instagram.
Up next, UVA is exploring further modifications, such as labeling providers as “LGBTQ Champions” on its website and developing brand-specific logos incorporating the rainbow symbol. Marshall said they’re also lobbying for patient navigators and always refining content.
“Terminology with this community expands and changes constantly, so this is definitely not something that we can just do once and forget,” she said. “We’ve got to make sure that we’re staying current with their concerns.”
This article features interviews with:
Aleksandra Golota
Marketing and PR Specialist
UVA Health
Charlottesville, Virginia
Amy-Sarah Marshall
Online Content Strategist, Strategic Relations & Marketing
UVA Health
President, Charlottesville Pride Community Network
Charlottesville, Virginia
Images courtesy UVA Health
