If you are black or brown in America, you are more likely to be diagnosed later, under-treated (1), un-insured (2) and die sooner (3) than white patients.

MSD prides itself on creating critical medicines that treat leading causes of death including heart disease and cancer, which are known to disproportionately impact black and brown communities. Addressing that issue head-on, the company’s media team found a way to help provide lifesaving treatment messages to minority audiences, thereby enabling and advancing health care equity. We conducted an Equity Audit of media targets, and evaluated our planning, buying, and measurement processes to find potential solutions.

The key insight uncovered by our self-audit was that to enable more equitable health outcomes, we needed to find a better way to reach patients from underrepresented communities.

MSD and our media agency partnered to create an innovative strategic framework that tracks reach against different audiences to establish transparency, and to help our partners stay accountable. We took a three-pronged approach of reach, resonance and responsibility to ensure underrepresented communities were part of our strategic framework to get the right message through the right channel at the right time. We optimized campaigns towards better health outcomes, and we drove higher health literacy and better relationships between patients in underrepresented groups and their health care teams (4).

Through an analysis of patient barriers, we uncovered that for many minority patients, the biggest way to impact health outcomes is to see a doctor as early and often as possible. An early-stage cancer diagnosis has 3X the survival rate of a late-stage diagnosis, but African Americans are much more likely to be diagnosed at an advanced stage than White people (5). The importance can’t be overstated – an early doctor visit could mean the difference between life or death. So, we developed a new custom KPI—Doctor Visits—to enable MSD and our media partners to drive better health outcomes.

Our execution consisted of three pillars:

• Measurement – We evaluated targets, plans, and partners to hold ourselves accountable to delivering messages to minority patients at parity with the general population. Additionally, by creating a dynamic performance dashboard, we identified best practices for underserved minority audiences.

• Reach – We found opportunities for new minority-owned partners to further advance health care equity. This called for bespoke equity solutions for media buying.

• Access – In many parts of the U.S., it is more difficult to access medical care due to low health literacy, transportation and other societal factors. We prioritized 12 markets that were especially impacted to bridge the gap and empower patients to speak to their doctors about their health care.

• We increased reach to minority audiences by 30% - meaning over 5 million more minority patients reached;

• We increased site visitation by 15% YOY in markets with the biggest health gaps; and

• In the example of one critical condition, our efforts contributed to 419% more Black patients scheduling specialty visits.

We are in the process of conducting a qualitative analysis and anticipate the sentiment to be both positive and significant, given the fact we achieved 2-3X stronger engagement from minorities in response to our work.