Healthcare Needs More Connection – and It Begins with Inclusion

Real Chemistry and POCSTOCK are excited to jointly announce our new partnership. POCSTOCK is a global network of creators who ensure the most talented people of color are behind and in front of the lens. POCSTOCK provides its partners with hundreds of thousands of images and videos focused on people of color and historically underserved communities. It helps organizations curate content with an aim of authenticity and cultural relevancy.

At Real Chemistry, we believe diversity, equity and inclusion are fundamental in transforming healthcare from what it is to what it should be. As a company, we have committed to more than just having a conversation – we are dedicated to operationalizing best practices for inclusion where our people, clients and the patients in the communities in which we live and serve feel seen, heard and understood in culturally relevant and respectful ways that celebrate and honor diversity. That means we need to source like-minded partners and diverse suppliers such as POCSTOCK as we continue to build upon our solid foundation of inclusion.

POCSTOCK, one of the largest Black-owned stock companies in the market, was the brainchild of founder Steve Jones, an accomplished advertising executive and agency leader who often found it difficult to market to underrepresented communities like his own. Knowing that his peers experienced similar challenges of sourcing images that were culturally relevant, he knew he was on to an idea to help meet this challenge. After pitching the idea to trusted members of his professional network, Jones enlisted DeSean Brown and Tamara Fleming to officially launch POCSTOCK in 2019.

"To increase diversity, equity and inclusion, we must have partners on the agency, brand and corporation side who are not just invested in theory but committed to DEI in practice,” says Brown, chief relationship officer of POCSTOCK. “This goes beyond just the content and the final product – it needs a commitment to follow through and disrupt strategy, planning, process and collaboration. Real Chemistry has been one of our strong early partners in this journey, having worked with us in a collaborative and inclusive way to set the foundation where positive change can take hold. With the inequities in healthcare and the intersectionality of consumer groups, this is an essential category to improve on with DEI and we love how Real Chemistry is stepping forward."

This partnership will allow Real Chemistry to source imagery captured through the lens of creatives and people of color that is authentic and culturally relevant. Real Chemistry will work closely with POCSTOCK by collaborating on how healthcare imaging can meet the needs of our clients and their patients. In addition to supporting supplier diversity and supporting our creative community, we will also be helping our clients connect with patients in ways that are supportive, inclusive and help historically underrepresented communities feel seen in ways they deserve.

“Our new relationship with POCSTOCK opens our entire organization to access a robust library of visual content that truly reflects our communities,” says Keith LaFerriere, executive creative director, Real Chemistry. “This offering is not only incredibly important to change the stereotypical healthcare narrative and embrace underserved groups through our different disciplines, but also allows our own teams to feel seen and understood and deliver content that they feel good about. It speaks to our values as a company when we think about being impact obsessed and better together."

Why Is This Important for Real Chemistry and Healthcare Marketers?

If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it was how structural inequities have been missed or ignored when it comes to the healthcare experience of historically underserved communities. Access, social determinants of health, and systemic racism play a significant role. Members of historically underserved groups are more likely to face barriers to getting care, which causes more health risk complications and increased mortality. These communities experienced higher rates of infection, hospital stays and death caused by COVID-19 than white, non-Hispanic people. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), non-Hispanic American Indians or Alaska Natives were 2.7 times more likely to require a hospital stay due to COVID-19 and non-Hispanic Black or African American people and Hispanic people were about twice as likely to require a hospital stay due to COVID-19 than non-Hispanic white people.

Real Chemistry is proud to be a disruptive innovator in healthcare and drive impact that helps patients. It begins with creating visual communications and content that help us connect with patients in the most authentic way possible in ways they feel seen and respected. While it is a small step in a patient’s healthcare journey, we know everything must start with a conversation. Medical education and advertising play a pivotal role in patients seeking more information and connecting with providers for care.

Engaging Diverse Suppliers Allows Companies to be Agile and Meet the Needs of Patients

Bringing diverse suppliers into our organization enables us to tap into new mindsets, perspectives and ideas. Not only does this provide a positive social impact, it makes incredibly important business sense – especially in a rapidly changing industry like healthcare. Diverse suppliers not only create healthy competition for suppliers, but diverse suppliers tend to be more agile. For clients looking to engage with diverse suppliers, we recommend:

1. Having a clear company liaison for diverse suppliers beyond the supplier onboarding process. Too often, a company solely focuses on onboarding. Think of it as stopping all your effort after a first date. You must have a relationship owner who will keep the lines of communication open. This will help create successful integration for the supplier into the business process in a way that delivers products and services, generates revenue and leads to growth for both parties.

2. Organizations must have an onboarding process that supplies a clear roadmap to completion within two to three months. Diverse suppliers tend to be like start-ups, and onboarding processes that take a year or longer are not beneficial financially.

3. Expect disruption that will lead to driving results. If a company brings a new supplier in to solve a challenge, processes may need to change to ensure a path to success. This requires organizations to be flexible, agile and innovative.

4. Commit to continuous feedback and engagement. Success often takes time and energy to build a relationship. This requires organizations to make the time to meet suppliers on a reasonable cadence to assess success and have two-way feedback on process, products and services.

Interested in more diversity, equity and inclusion updates? Sign up for our monthly Health Equity Digest, which looks across the healthcare landscape through a DE&I lens, bringing you the data and ideas that can help change healthcare to what it should be.