In this Season 2 kickoff of Deep: The Health Marketing Podcast, healthcare marketing leader John Mangano sits down with Holly Dunn, Managing Partner at Havas Media Network, to explore one of the most pressing issues in healthcare today: how to reach underserved and underrepresented patient populations.
Holly shares how systemic gaps in healthcare access, from rural health deserts to cultural and socioeconomic barriers, can be addressed through smarter marketing strategies, innovative partnerships, and authentic messaging. Together, she and John discuss the kinds of innovations and initiatives that can bring precision, empathy, and intentionality to healthcare advertising.
Whether you’re a marketer, brand leader, healthcare professional, or consumer, this conversation offers actionable insights into how technology, creativity, and compassion can be combined to make a real difference.
Transcript:
John Mangano (JM): Welcome to Deep, the health marketing podcast. I'm your host, John Mangano. We're kicking off Season 2 with a renewed focus on one of the most important challenges in healthcare today: reaching underserved patient populations. There are whole populations in the US who don't have the same access to healthcare providers, the same access to healthcare facilities, or even the same access to the healthcare information patients use to make decisions. Without that access, they're also left out of the data the industry uses to study healthcare trends, which in turn reduces their access even further.
Today we'll explore how smarter strategies, deeper empathy, and more inclusive thinking can help us connect with all patients, including those who've historically been overlooked. There's no better person to discuss this with than Holly Dunn, Managing Partner at Havas Media Network. Holly brings both personal passion and professional insight to this challenge, and we're going to cover everything from health deserts and underinsured populations to incorporating these populations into outcomes-driven planning and measurement. Welcome, Holly.
Holly Dunn (HD): Thanks, John, really excited to be here today.
JM: As you know, this show is all about the people — the patients, the providers, and those of us in healthcare marketing. Holly, tell me a bit about yourself — you have a really interesting family.
HD: I have three kids — two of them are twins, who just finished their freshman year of college, which John and I actually have in common — and a younger one still in high school. All three are athletes, which definitely keeps us busy; you can find us most weekends on a field somewhere, traveling to a tournament. That family dynamic connects to my work in interesting ways too — being in our particular age demographic, I'm responsible for both kids and aging parents simultaneously, which gives me a very personal understanding of the different healthcare challenges across generations.
JM: No one really warns you about this stage of life — parenting kids who think they're adults and don't want to hear what you have to say, at least mine don't, while also "parenting" your own parents, who think they should still be telling you how to live your life, even though they now depend on you in various ways. My 95-year-old mother is in rural Texas; my brother is physically there taking care of her, and I'm always trying to help remotely, which is genuinely hard. Do you have that same dynamic?
HD: Absolutely — we actually have a lot more in common than I realized, because my parents are also in Texas, and the distance makes it genuinely challenging. Up until a couple of years ago, they lived 20 minutes from me. Now that they're a plane ride away, it's really difficult to stay supportive of them while balancing everything else in daily life.
JM: That's actually a great segue into this conversation, because when most people think about underrepresented populations, I think we tend to picture a fairly narrow definition. It's actually much broader — there are a lot of populations that go underrepresented. What are some populations you think people don't realize are underserved, that really deserve more attention?
HD: Every time we talk with someone about what they consider "equity in healthcare," a new topic comes up — underinsured populations, people with gaps in supplemental insurance, cultural nuances, and location is a big one. Living in the Northeast, we're probably not as aware of it, but there are huge health deserts in this country where people simply don't have the access to healthcare that we do — the local hospital might be more than an hour away, which, when you're talking about maternal care specifically, can have enormous implications.
We've obviously touched on the aging population too. Another issue that comes up a lot, and probably doesn't get talked about as much, is the policy side of it — what's happening in the political landscape that's actively impacting healthcare accessibility.
JM: At Havas, there's an increased focus specifically on underrepresented populations — tell us more about that project.
HD: We've actually been focused on what we call "meaningful media" for many years, and we've developed a few marketplaces addressing meaningful media, bringing content and data alignment together across different industries. About a year ago, we recognized a real gap in the healthcare marketplace around equity, and decided to build the Health Equity Marketplace, together with DeepIntent — which represents the healthcare industry's first dedicated solution for addressing health disparities specifically through targeted advertising. It's a genuinely groundbreaking opportunity, and we're really excited about it.
JM: I've been in this industry a while, and everyone's excited to help condition sufferers — but no one has really taken the time to focus specifically on making sure a hundred percent of the groups actually suffering from a given condition are being reached. In the end, you've got a fixed budget, and you're trying to reach as many patients as possible, but not all patients are the same. If you're not specifically focused on that, not by design, but just by happenstance, entire pockets get missed. Without that focus, we're unintentionally creating disparities. I don't think anyone in this industry wants that outcome — it's just what happens without deliberate attention, whether it's tied to geography or other factors. Let's walk through some of these different types of disparities. First, health deserts — give me some examples.
HD: Health deserts are typically defined as areas where people have limited geographic access to healthcare — that could be a pharmacy, a clinic, or a hospital. That obviously impacts a patient's ability to get care exactly when they need it most. One example that always comes to mind, probably because it's the most widely discussed, is maternal healthcare — the number of women in this country who live more than an hour from a hospital, which can severely impact maternal health during delivery. If they can't get to a hospital in time during labor, it genuinely affects the health of both mother and baby.
JM: And beyond that — think about how busy we all are, working 40-plus hours a week, taking care of kids, sometimes parents too. I had a doctor's appointment this morning; it was 10 minutes from my house, I ran in, did what I needed, and got back to my day. If that same visit had required three or four hours, I honestly don't know if I would've gone. In my case it was a dermatology visit — I'm a redhead, grew up in the sun, and need to stay on top of certain skin conditions that could genuinely be life-threatening — but I don't know if I'd go nearly as often if it required half a day's commitment. That distance really matters.
HD: A hundred percent. And when you layer in patients who need to visit clinics regularly — people on dialysis, people needing regular infusions, anything requiring a clinical setting they don't have easy access to — that puts a real strain, not just on them personally, but on the entire healthcare system.
JM: Where are the health deserts, if you think about the US specifically — what are some of the more obvious ones, and some less obvious ones?
HD: Great question. Obviously, less populated regions — the Midwest, the Northwest, or areas that are geographically difficult to navigate. People living in mountain regions might not be traveling a hundred miles to reach a clinic, but the winding roads alone could turn that into a two- or three-hour trip. Then there are states like Texas, with dense population centers but also large, much less accessible rural areas.
JM: And accessibility means something very different for me, relatively healthy, than it does for my 95-year-old mother, who until recently was still driving herself. The idea of her traveling more than 20 minutes is roughly equivalent to me traveling five hours for treatment. A patient's condition matters too — someone undergoing cancer treatment, for instance, is being asked a lot more by that hour-long trip than most of us would be.
HD: And when you look at the aging population specifically, they're also less able to drive themselves, so they need an entirely separate mode of transportation just to access that healthcare in the first place. Those transportation issues really tie directly into this marketplace, and into how we think about supporting patients through messaging and helping them work around these challenges.
JM: What about other underserved populations — I think most people immediately think of cultural groups who might approach healthcare differently, or need something more specific.
HD: When government guidelines around vaccine policy shift, that changes how insurance companies cover vaccinations, and which vaccines get covered for which populations — children, aging adults, women, maternal care, and so on. That has a real trickle-down effect on the supply chain too. If an insurance company stops covering something, doctors won't stock it as heavily, and pharmaceutical manufacturers will scale back production accordingly. So even if you personally want a given vaccine, if current guidance doesn't cover it, you might genuinely struggle to get it.
JM: Even where you go to get something can shift. My wife is Canadian, and I found it really strange to learn that, for certain vaccines there, you actually go to the pharmacy, pick it up yourself, and then bring it to your healthcare provider, who administers it. That felt bizarre to me, coming from a totally different system — but it works fine for them. If something like that suddenly changed here, though, I think a lot of us would be genuinely delayed just figuring out the new process. Even just changing the distribution and logistics, not the actual injection itself, forces everyone to adapt, and that adjustment period rarely makes things faster at first — usually the opposite.
HD: And I think telemedicine has helped close certain gaps in some areas, but as you're pointing out, a vaccine simply can't be delivered via telemedicine — you still have to physically go somewhere, a pharmacy or a clinic, to actually receive it.
JM: You mentioned telemedicine — and remote and telemedicine can work well together in some cases. The nice thing about telemedicine is that it's become much more common, and most of us feel fairly comfortable with it now, but it can only go so far. I'm reminded of a surgeon and researcher stationed in Antarctica who ultimately had to perform her own mastectomy, because she simply couldn't leave during the winter and had nowhere else to go — mind-blowing bravery. But that raises the question: how do we manage remote and telemedicine today in a way that genuinely helps us reach these less accessible populations?
HD: Insurance companies and providers are more engaged with telemedicine now than they've ever been. Every week, I get a reminder in the mail from our insurance company: "Don't forget, you can schedule this via a telemedicine call," or "get this support through an app." But I'm always reminded that we tend to live in a bit of a bubble around technology adoption — assuming everyone also has reliable, stable Wi-Fi, when that's simply not true everywhere. Not every part of the country has that kind of access. So while telemedicine might be a genuine solution for some people, it can be an actual hurdle for others.
JM: Have you seen anything in the industry working to help resolve that gap?
HD: Yes — I've seen brands try to close some of these gaps in care in various ways, whether that's mobile vaccination clinics actually going out to underserved or rural areas to bring the vaccine directly to people, or companies running mobile infusion centers and pop-up clinics. Those are real opportunities to reach some of these populations, but the other challenge is making sure people actually know these offerings exist in the first place. That's one of the things we're hoping our marketplace will help solve — really focusing in on the people who need care most, and making sure they're aware these opportunities are available to them.
JM: You and Havas clearly recognize how important this is. How's the industry doing overall right now, and where do you think we can improve, and what would that impact actually look like? Sorry for stacking three questions in one, but I find this genuinely fascinating, and how much Havas is leaning into it.
HD: I think people generally have good intentions, and it's time to align those intentions with actual action. Sometimes we tend not to focus on the things that matter most, or that need the most attention. Health equity is being discussed more now, partly because of growing awareness, and partly because of the current political climate bringing some of this into the spotlight. But I think we still need to find new ways to address it, and make sure the people who need us most don't get lost in the noise.
JM: I really admire the focus you all are placing on this. I've worked with nearly every agency and brand in this industry, and every single one genuinely wants to help patients get better — we all agree on positive outcomes and maximizing them. But I don't think everyone fully realizes that even when a campaign maximizes its impact, that impact might only be maximized within a specific, defined slice of the population, not the population as a whole. Your recognition of that gap is genuinely commendable. I think most of the industry, with a bit more awareness, would agree that's exactly what's happening, but few are as focused on it as you are, and I think that focus makes a real difference. How has the industry responded to this project?
HD: We've gotten a huge amount of response, and all of it positive — people reaching out wanting to get involved, offering new ideas. There have even been opportunities we weren't originally thinking about when we launched this, like how to activate creators in this space, and use the power of social media to amplify the precision of this offering. So we're definitely continuing to evolve it — the more we talk about it, the more opportunities we see to enrich the marketplace with additional content or data, and amplify its overall impact.
JM: We've talked a lot about patients facing accessibility challenges, but a huge part of what we do in pharma is focused on the providers actually working with those patients. It all intertwines in the end, but as marketers, we tend to treat them as separate audiences. When it comes to marketing to HCPs specifically, what's the most effective way to focus on reaching providers who serve these underserved populations?
HD: Great question — one we haven't fully explored yet, though we've given it some initial thought. Our campaigns are generally focused on both patients and providers. On the provider side, it's actually easier to identify specific physicians using their NPI numbers and existing targeting capabilities. We've thought about overlaying that with script-level data, to identify patients who might be on a regular infusion schedule, or a routine vaccination protocol, and use that to help identify physicians operating at the edges of what we'd call health deserts — helping them reach and provide things like copay support messaging, or connecting them with mobile clinic programs some clients have already launched, to get that communication out to patients directly.
This affects everyone, and physicians are genuinely on the front line of it. I'd also add that it extends beyond the physician to the entire care team — nurses and office staff play a huge role in actually enabling that care.
JM: A lot of healthcare really is about community — there's the geographic dimension, where certain communities simply aren't served, but there's also the cultural dimension you mentioned earlier — recognizing that certain cultural groups may be less likely to visit a doctor at all, or more likely to trust a doctor who resembles them culturally. That recognition helps shape targeting. We've all built target lists over the years, but as we start recognizing underserved patient populations more specifically, maybe the target list needs to expand beyond just those patients, to include the specific HCPs who serve them. A lot of the time, the underlying issue is simply a lack of data — maybe those patients are underinsured, or part of a more cash-based healthcare culture, so the doctors treating them don't generate the same kind of visible data trail. Maybe there's an opportunity to focus not just on the patients themselves, but specifically on the HCPs already serving them.
HD: That's a great point, and honestly another area we haven't fully explored yet from a marketplace perspective specifically — but across the broader pharmaceutical landscape, point of care is a huge part of our overall offering. It's a real opportunity to be in the room with both the provider and the patient, and think carefully about how we approach point of care — offering different language versions, culturally relevant materials, and educational content that can flexibly serve a wide range of patient needs. Right now, we have so much opportunity, through technology and AI, to be more thoughtful and curated in our approach and content than we've historically been, and to actually make that impact where it matters most.
JM: If a client came to you and said, "I'm fully on board, let's solve for this together, even though my brands historically haven't done anything specific for underserved populations," what would be the first three steps you'd recommend?
HD: First, I'd genuinely reassure them that they haven't done "nothing." Pharmaceutical companies already have copay programs and existing structures in place to help serve these populations and fill certain gaps. Where we probably haven't done a great job is getting that support into the right person's hands, at the right moment.
I think there are three things this approach really enables. First, with the right technology and precision, we now have the capability to reach these populations intentionally, not accidentally, or as a side effect of a larger program — we can be genuinely targeted and specific about who really needs to hear a given message. Second, it's about real intent — this is about people being healthier and living longer, not about checking a box on a form saying, "yes, we run a diversity program." It's about genuinely helping people live longer, better lives, and making it easier for companies to meaningfully participate in that. Third is cultural competency — understanding, embracing, and supporting how different communities actually make healthcare decisions, and adapting a brand's approach accordingly. Technology, AI, and things like dynamic content are going to power a lot of this — because the message itself has to be delivered specifically to the audience it's meant for, in order to actually resonate.
JM: As an industry, what's our overall scorecard here? Are we doing this as well as we can, or is there a lot of room, a lot of white space, still left?
HD: We're really at the beginning. People are starting to recognize this, and it's being discussed more — starting to understand that the cost of inaction is enormous, that healthcare disparities hurt the entire healthcare system economically, not just the individuals directly affected. Brands need to stop treating this as a "nice to have" and start treating it as an essential part of their actual strategy. We also need to keep talking about it — opportunities like this podcast, an article, an industry event — there's so much more we can do to keep underrepresented populations part of the conversation. We're moving forward as an industry, and ad tech supporting that shift is critical.
JM: When you think about it, pharma is actually pretty new to marketing compared to CPG or almost any other category — we've really only been doing this at real scale since maybe the '90s, arguably the 2000s. So as an industry, we're arguably still adolescents, at best, when it comes to marketing. We've figured out how to make marketing and media buying actually help patients get well, and there's plenty of research proving pharma marketing improves patient outcomes overall. But I think, largely because we've never focused on the micro-segments within a broader population, we've asked "how do we help diabetics, generally" rather than recognizing there are 60 million diabetics, and asking whether we're actually reaching all of them. I think this is mostly a lack-of-awareness problem, and the more we talk about it, the more we recognize that everyone deserves access to healthcare, and marketing is genuinely one of the levers we have to help make that happen.
HD: I agree with everything you just said, completely.
JM: So what should the next steps be for us, as an industry?
HD: Keep talking about it. The more we talk about it, and the more we use technology to actually solve real problems, bring people together, and give patients real opportunities to overcome the health challenges they're facing, the better off we'll all be. And the more we expand our own offering, the more we learn — sharing those results and ideas will genuinely benefit all of us.
JM: For our listeners, what would be the three key takeaways you'd want them to remember about advancing health equity across this industry?
HD: First, like I said: keep talking about it, keep asking questions, keep thinking it through. The more we innovate, and the more opportunities we surface and discuss, the more real progress we'll make. Second, be genuinely authentic — not just checking a box that says "yes, we have a diversity program" or "yes, we're focused on health equity," but actually finding solutions that help people be healthier, happier, and live longer. And connected to that authenticity: make sure it's delivered in a genuine voice, and recognize that we genuinely have the power to save lives here. This is one of the very few industries in advertising where we can honestly say we're making a real difference in someone's life.
JM: And wherever we are as a population, the healthier we all are, the better off everyone is — whether that's communicable disease, or general health conditions like diabetes. When it's all said and done, it's better for the population as a whole, economically, socially, emotionally — whether it's a small local community or the entire country, we all ultimately affect one another, whether that's obvious in the moment or not.
HD: Completely agree. And the other important thing to keep in mind is that the cost of inaction is genuinely enormous — healthcare disparities hurt the entire healthcare system, not just the individuals directly facing them, through costs, strained infrastructure, and policy consequences.
JM: To close — if you had access to your younger self, just starting out in this field, interested in this exact topic, what advice would you give them?
HD: I'd tell them to stay focused on what actually matters. Sometimes we get lost in the overwhelming amount of data, partners, and opportunities in this job, and lose sight of what we're really trying to accomplish. I like to say that advertising, generally, isn't life or death — but in healthcare, sometimes it genuinely is. It's hugely important to the world we live in today, with so many different things affecting people's health. I'd tell my younger self to stay focused on doing good, being better, and not get too caught up in the day-to-day ups and downs.
JM: Well, thank you very much for joining us today.
HD: Thank you for having me — this was a great conversation, I really appreciate it.
Links
Relevant Blog Posts: How Health Intelligence™ Is Advancing Health Equity through Smarter Advertising
