Features

By: Steve Barrett

Health is top of mind as we unveil our 2020 Health Influencer 50 list.

In an unprecedented year, health tops everyone’s agenda. From COVID-19, to the lens trained on health disparities among Black Americans following incidents of racial injustice, to the environment and impact of global warming illustrated by forest fires and frequent extreme weather incidents, our lives are more fragile in 2020 than ever.

Throughout these traumas, the MVPs have been frontline workers stepping up to keep us safe, heal our sick, comfort the dying, make sure we are fed, collect garbage and deliver packages.

It’s difficult to believe the No. 1 on our list, Dr. Anthony Fauci, will be 80 years old in December, such is the energy and relentlessness the veteran of fights against diseases including AIDS and Ebola has invested in battling COVID-19.

Pitched against powerful forces peddling narratives that fit political agendas rather than fact-based realism, Fauci remained steadfast and unflustered in his commitment to telling the truth, leading colleagues to dub him the government’s “most effective communicator.”

At a time when the U.S. and the world needs leadership defined by clear and effective communication, Fauci, Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling, CVS’ Kym White and others among the HI50 are crucial if we are to effectively roll out vaccines and reach a safe post-COVID future.

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By: Steve Madden

It’s almost quaint to look at the 2019 Health Influencer 50 roster to see what our concerns were last year, before anybody had heard of COVID-19. That list included people who urged us to stretch more and to sit up straight, to work out harder and to eat healthier. It included some celebrities, some politicians and some government officials, and represented a pretty diverse view of the entire health spectrum. Like I said: quaint.

This year’s list, as you might well imagine, is different. We feature a big-name celebrity — Tom Hanks — but only because he was one of the first public figures to contract the disease and use his social media platforms to warn people of COVID-19’s dangers. We feature politicians, largely because of their work on bringing relief to Americans suffering from the fallout of the pandemic. And government officials? Look no farther than the cover of the magazine. In this, the year the world was turned on its head, a pizza-loving infectious disease expert from farthest Brooklyn is the most influential person in American health.

The Health Influencer 50 list is an annual joint venture between MM+M and our Haymarket Media stablemate PRWeek. This list skews heavily toward those involved in marketing communications — getting the word out about health-related issues. That includes people such as Merck CEO Ken Frazier, one of only a handful of Black CEOs in the Fortune 500, who has used his bully pulpit as leader of one of the largest and most influential companies in the world to speak out about racial injustices, and not just through the prism of healthcare inequities. It doesn’t hurt that Frazier has a comms background.

My sense — and my fervent hope — is that at this time next year, the 2021 HI50 will be celebrating the people who helped communicate to the world about the efficacy and value of new vaccines that bring the pandemic to heel. Nothing about this experience has been easy or simple, and spreading the word about the value and safety of a vaccine will no doubt come with its own challenges. But the work of those communicators will build on the very good work of the people on the 2020 HI50 list. And that the 2022 list is full of people urging us to exercise, stretch and eat healthy food.

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By: Diana Bradley

The COVID-19 pandemic started to unfold as Kym White was in her final interviews for a number of roles — one being SVP and CCO at CVS Health. But White, who left her position at Edelman for Vertex Pharmaceuticals in the spring of 2018, actually had her eye on younger companies with a huge potential to disrupt and impact healthcare.

However, when the virus started ramping up in March, White found herself more and more compelled to join a company that would play a role on the front lines of addressing the pandemic.

“I knew CVS Health would be one of the few companies keeping its lights on when things were at their worst,” says White.

She adds that CVS Health’s “simple and clear purpose,” which is to help people on their path to better health, also attracted her to the company. 

White actually has a history with CVS. Earlier in her career, when serving as global chair of the health sector at Edelman, she led the CVS Health account and was part of the company’s landmark decision to stop selling tobacco products in 2014. So she already was familiar with and admired the company’s mission and values.

White officially took on the role as CVS Health’s comms head in April. In her first 90 days, and from her dining room table no less, this is a sampling of what crossed her desk: Hero pay for frontline workers; the return of CARES Act stimulus funding; and figuring out how to respond to the various social justice matters happening nationally. Additionally, some CVS stores suffered vandalism and destruction from protests. 

A key focus White had was ensuring people still had access to care and could take their prescriptions during a pandemic. 

This, of course, was in addition to the ongoing communications work of a Fortune 5 company operating in three very complex business units: Aetna, CVS Caremark and CVS Pharmacy. And all of the company’s ongoing activities, including external, internal, content development, corporate events and business unit communications, were adapting their operations and content due to COVID-19.

White’s boss, Tom Moriarty, EVP, chief policy and external affairs officer and general counsel of CVS Health, has been impressed with how she’s handled everything thus far.

“[White’s] client service mentality, knowledge of healthcare communications and leadership skills have made a significant impact at CVS Health since the day she arrived,” says Moriarty. “She capably led the CVS team at Edelman and we’re thrilled to have her in-house now, leading our communications team at a critical time for our continued transformation.”

Campaigns born out of the COVID-19 era

One major undertaking by CVS since March has been standing up 1,800 testing sites and addressing issues with evolving technologies and lab timelines. The company has opened testing sites in areas serving communities disproportionally impacted by the pandemic, such as Black and Latino communities.

“We have done eight major waves of media relations work to make sure people understand how and where they can be tested,” says White. 

In mid-August, CVS introduced Healthy Conversations, a monthly video and podcast series developed to showcase its clinical expertise and demonstrate how it is innovating in healthcare. It targets healthcare professionals, includes conversations with outside experts about clinical issues and is focused on COVID-19 response and recovery.

“CVS Health wants to be seen as a reliable source of info in a world where sometimes people aren’t certain who to believe,” explains White of the effort.

To celebrate the company’s frontline workers who “bring their heart to work,” CVS launched its Heart@Work campaign, supported by Edelman. The activation included a page on its website sharing employees’ stories through blog posts and videos.

 CVS also launched an initiative called #TimeForCare focused on encouraging people to seek help for chronic conditions, and not let a fear of going to the doctor postpone necessary care.

“In this era of COVID, we know that in the first half of the year, a lot of people deferred medical care, particularly for chronic conditions,” White says. The campaign, which includes a microsite and TV spot, aims to alert people to any extra solutions Aetna can provide. 

Re-evaluating the chessboard

CVS Health’s comms team hasn’t seen any furloughs or layoffs and has actually been “needed more than ever” in the current environment to make sure stakeholders, customers and staffers remain connected and informed as the business continues full throttle during the pandemic. White does plan to reorganize the comms team in the coming months, but she notes that the changes will be “nothing dramatic.”

“I am looking at the pieces I have on the chessboard and making sure people are in the right places and that they are doing the highest value work for the company,” she says.

CVS works with firms including Edelman, Glover Park Group, W2O and Sloane. White says she is very happy with the company’s agency partners, but may be making changes to what each one works on.

“I am taking a look at our agencies and making sure we have the right partners assigned to the right activities,” explains White. “I want to look at duplication of effort.” 

Another area she is looking at potentially changing is how CVS uses various social media platforms.

Aside from the pandemic, CVS also wanted to respond to the social injustice conversation taking place in the U.S. A number of brands, such as The North Face, Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s and REI, pulled their ads from Facebook in July to support the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, which calls for a boycott of the social media network due to its positions on hate speech and misinformation.

CVS took a pause on social media, but not just for July and not necessarily as part of the general Facebook boycott that was happening.

“We are evaluating our partners and the steps they are taking to eliminate hate speech,” says White. “We didn’t join the boycott per se because we wanted to make sure we could play by our rules and we could make sure our criteria were satisfied without having to move en masse as a group.” 

Internal comms and keeping staffers safe

White oversees 120 staffers. Her team has been working from home since March. Once the pandemic has ended, employees will be offered more flexibility on how and where they get their work done.

“Companies have learned very quickly that productivity hasn’t suffered,” White says. “I don’t think we will go back to how it was before [working full time in an office].” 

White admits she has still never gone to the CVS Health office and doesn’t even know where it is. Even so, she has had no problem getting to know senior people at the company remotely. But with working from home, it has been harder for her to acquaint herself with other people in the organization in the spontaneous ways she might have bumped into them if she was in an office environment.

“The disadvantage of working from home is not getting to know other department members as quickly or easily as I would in a normal working environment,” White explains. “There is no running into someone in an elevator or talking to a more junior colleague at the coffee machine. Those opportunities have disappeared.” 

But while White is focused on her team and how they are staying connected, she has also been working to keep employees who are required to work on-site safe during the coronavirus pandemic.

CVS Pharmacy locations have remained open during the crisis. The company has made sure employees have personal protective equipment and strongly encourages all customers to wear masks “out of respect for our colleagues,” says White. 

But it has been a challenge enforcing face mask rules for customers, and some patrons have become abusive or have damaged stores when questioned for not wearing masks. White says CVS does not ask employees to play the role of security officers.

“The whole issue of wearing masks has been politicized,” White notes. “We don’t want to put any colleagues in danger of having to enforce the policy. They are not law enforcement.” 

Along with COVID, a more general challenge White is keeping her eye on within the healthcare industry is making it more affordable and accessible to people. To help with this, last year, CVS expanded certain retail locations with HealthHUB offerings for primary care alongside its basic Minute Clinic services.

“There is a shortage of primary care physicians,” says White. “We see ourselves as a supplement to primary care — a support system to make sure more care is provided at community levels and affordably to keep people on their path to better health.” 

CVS Health, which raked in $257 billion in 2019 revenue and has nearly 300,000 employees, is best known for being a retail pharmacy. Three quarters of all Americans live within three miles of a CVS, and often have longstanding relationships with their pharmacists. The company has 10,000 stores across the country, DC and Puerto Rico and 4.5 million customers are served by CVS pharmacies daily. Additionally, 1,100 Minute Clinic locations serve 54 million people a year.

“The idea that we have that footprint is really important as we think about COVID-19,” says White. “It has been speeding our evolution of serving our customers and clients in the community and home and in the palm of their hand through digital solutions.”

One unexpected consumer behavior to come out of the pandemic has been the massive response to telehealth. 

“We have seen an acceleration and the acceptance of and adoption of telehealth solutions that will advance that business segment,” explains White. “We have probably advanced telehealth as much in five months as anyone thought we could in five years.

Going forward, CVS Health is focused on transforming the delivery of healthcare. 

“That won’t happen overnight,” says White. “We want to make healthcare more accessible, affordable and connected. New products and initiatives will launch going forward to bring that to life.” 

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By: Laura Entis

As the rest of the country locked itself inside during the early days of COVID-19, frontline workers reported for duty day in and day out. Doctors and nurses, meatpackers and corrections officers, transit operators and grocery store clerks — they continued to go about their business despite the advanced risk of exposure. As a result, hundreds of thousands were infected and thousands died, including more than 1,700 healthcare workers.

News reports have drawn attention to these deaths, as well as to what Adia Wingfield, a sociology professor and associate dean at Washington University in St. Louis, describes as “the challenges frontline workers have been facing even before the pandemic, in terms of burnout, stress and the hours and amount of work.” However, whether this extends to influence is another matter.

The shameful reality is that, 11 months after the discovery of the novel coronavirus, essential workers across industries continue to contend with unsafe conditions. Stunningly, healthcare facilities in the U.S. still lack adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). 

“Nurses are more visible and their stories are more present. But are we actually listening to what they are telling us?” asks Christopher Friese, a professor of nursing, health management and policy at the University of Michigan. “That’s the open question.”

The pandemic has forced many frontline workers into an impossible situation, with many facing pressure on multiple fronts. “It’s a life and death issue,” explains Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “They are being forced to work, they are being threatened with the loss of their jobs and they are also being laid off in large numbers.”

For workers nervous about layoffs, demanding safer working conditions can be an unrealistic proposition. Under the Trump administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has “literally become dysfunctional,” Bronfenbrenner says. “There is no enforcement.”

Safety records are no longer public, while inspections have been significantly scaled back, leaving workers at the mercy of their employers’ ability — and willingness — to enforce existing standards. “You can be as careful as you want to be,” Friese adds, but going to work often means entering an environment outside your control.

Some fare better than others

Certain frontline workers are more likely to face unsafe working conditions than others — a reality that cuts across industries, but is similarly true within them. For example, healthcare workers at large, nonprofit hospitals, which generally serve more affluent patient populations, have fared relatively well, in part because they have access to protective measures such as testing, adequate staffing and PPE, says Patricia Davidson, dean of the School of Nursing at Johns Hopkins University.

Meanwhile, workers at smaller facilities and nursing homes are often more vulnerable due to less developed systems. “We are seeing support and resources going to communities and patient populations that are already well-off and relatively comfortable,” Wingfield explains. Meanwhile, historically underserved communities that have been disproportionately hit by the virus continue to lack adequate equipment and staffing.

Indeed, COVID-19 taps into existing, deeply ingrained health inequities that affect healthcare workers as well as patients. While writing and researching her book Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy, Wingfield spoke with physicians, nurses and health technicians at multiple health organizations. Before the pandemic, Black healthcare workers at under-resourced public facilities reported soaring levels of stress and alienation. They also felt exploited: Their willingness to go above and beyond for their patients, many of whom reminded them of friends and family, was being taken advantage of by a healthcare system unwilling to provide the resources to truly equalize care.

The result, not surprisingly, has been high levels of burnout and, in some cases, turnover. “That was the case five years ago,” Wingfield says. “I would imagine it only has gotten significantly worse in the wake of the pandemic.”

In the absence of federal, state and local regulations, unions have provided workers with some protections — not to mention a certain degree of influence. To that end, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the country’s largest meatpacking union, held press conferences and released information about infections and deaths among its ranks. “If the union weren’t there, no one would even know what was happening in the industry,” Bronfenbrenner notes. 

A strong union, one that stands up to officials and employers on behalf of its workers, can force significant concessions. Following pushback from the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), New York City delayed the start of in-person learning by nearly a month, giving public schools more time to prepare. The rollout was chaotic and mired in controversy, yet multiple New York City teachers shared that, without the support of the union and the influence it wields, the process would have felt even more out of control.

Given the absence of comprehensive, up-to-date government health data, some unions have stepped up to fill important blind spots. In September, National Nurses United released a report revealing that more than 200 registered nurses have died from COVID-19. Addressing infection spikes and deaths allows the profession to identify “where the problems are,” Friese says, and allocate resources to better protect its members.

Unfortunately, many workers don’t just lack a strong union — they also lack any semblance of an organization that advocates for their interests. 

Take the gig economy, which has swelled during the pandemic thanks to dwindling traditional jobs and an increase in on-demand delivery orders. Gig workers aren’t classified as employees, but as independent contractors, a group that lacks benefits and other protections. “They are extremely vulnerable,” Bronfenbrenner says. 

Taking the first step

For these and other workers making minimum wage or close to it, real influence starts with policy changes that favor workers’ rights. It also means pressuring private and public employers alike to address pre-existing inequities in the workforce, which have only been amplified by COVID-19.

For workers of color, the first step in addressing these disparities is getting organizations and systems to acknowledge they exist in the first place. “One of my hopes is that healthcare facilities will make the issues facing their workers of color, and Black workers in particular, a central priority,” Wingfield says.

This requires a recognition that healthcare workers are likely to experience the pandemic differently based on a variety of factors, including their race and gender. “We know this is taking an enormous toll on providers across the board,” Wingfield continues.

But she adds a caveat: “Black workers are going to have to navigate a particular puzzle of trying to save and cure people with whom they often have some sort of familiarity and connection, in an environment where that connection hasn’t always been recognized, rewarded or respected.”

In the bigger picture, more equitable influence for frontline workers stems from stronger social support networks, and the creation of models that put people over profit. “We, as a society, in some ways need to be held accountable for people who died — and who did not have to die,” Davidson explains. This means investing in a robust, integrated public health system capable of providing high-quality data so the same mistakes aren’t made the next time our health system faces a crisis. “A safe working environment is something we are all entitled to,” she adds.

Frontline workers clearly agree. Bronfenbrenner notes that, despite a depressed economy, “We’ve seen more strikes than we’ve seen in a long time.”

As 2020 has proved in spades, it’s anyone’s guess what the short-, immediate- or long-term future holds. But for her part, Bronfenbrenner is hopeful that COVID-19, not to mention the stark disparities it has laid bare, will usher in an age of increased organizing activity. This, she notes, was true of the Great Depression, another period marked by rising inequality. 

Because, of course, not everyone is suffering financially. Large corporations have seen their profits surge. The stock market continues to climb, expanding the fortunes of the country’s wealthiest people.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the economic spectrum, more and more people are being asked to choose between feeding their children and keeping their homes. As Bronfenbrenner puts it, “That’s when you see people saying, ‘I’m going to organize and I’m going to go on strike. When it’s my children’s health or my children’s home, I am not going to let my employer put my life at risk.’”

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