With little warning, many companies – including ours – were thrust into a remote-only working environment with the onset of COVID-19 and social distancing. While we are extremely fortunate to work from home fairly seamlessly, it has not been without its challenges. And among those challenges has been keeping employees engaged as effectively as when the team was in the office – especially without a clear end date in sight. Here’s what has worked well so far.

Being human.

These are unprecedented times, where authenticity, flexibility and sincerity are critical in communications and interactions. Colleagues are acknowledging the change, the challenges and the upsides in direct, empathetic and even humorous ways. These moments help the team realize that we are all in this together.

Keeping it constant.

Engagement does not have to be all business, or solely when there are major announcements to make. Whether it’s a weeklong virtual “spirit week” with new activities daily, a funny meme at the end of a long day, or a poll and follow-up content with the results, we look to engage the broader team every day – a reminder that we’re still here (at least virtually).

Leaning into our values.

Our president shared a note about how our values are more important, and relevant, than ever during the office closure. Our values drive our culture, and understanding how they are helping us persevere during this challenging time has been energizing, comforting and unifying.

Giving options.

Everyone has different interests, availabilities and comfort levels in virtual activity participation. Allowing for options enables individuals to engage in ways that enhance their experience working from home, without the participation seeming overbearing. As a few examples, we conduct daily “brain breaks” to supplement the benefits of “water cooler” talk, a weekly happy hour, and opportunities to share different tips and current realities on photo-sharing platforms. There is something for everyone, and team members participate as they see fit.

Making an extra effort.

Having a finger on the pulse of how direct reports and team members are doing is critical, and this takes more effort than walking down the hall or peeking around a corner when working remote. Actions like suggesting a video chat instead of a phone call for a check in or following up with someone we have not heard from recently are worth it to ensure colleagues feel connected and supported.

Getting feedback and adjusting.

We are a month in, and so far, feedback has been largely positive. Understanding what is working (and what isn’t) has helped us lean into what colleagues value most, so we can make this new, albeit temporary, normal as positive an experience as possible.

Most of us know how great it can be to have a day working from home. Commuting from your bed to your desk takes mere minutes, you can have your own freshly made food, and – perhaps best of all – you can leverage breaks to get some things done at home you wouldn’t otherwise have time to do. A recent study from Stanford even suggests that employees who work from home are 13% more productive than those who work in a traditional office setting.

However, working from home regularly has its challenges. Millions of working Americans are finding out just how challenging it can be as we distance ourselves to reduce the spread of the coronavirus across the country. We’re all seeing now that it’s not always so easy to be productive in a home setting over the long term.

The lack of structure – mental and physical – makes it easy to find yourself distracted. It’s tough to focus on a conference call with children running around or pets begging for your attention. And how can you possibly crank out that memo or presentation when you can see the growing mountain of laundry piling up?

Having worked remotely for the majority of a combined three years, we have found five things that are essential to unlocking your productivity potential:

1. Getting ready for work: It’s so tempting to just stay in your pajamas, grab your laptop, and get to work. However, part of being productive at work is getting in the mental state of being at work. We’ve found that this means maintaining a similar morning routine as if you were going to the office. You might not need to wear “work” clothes, but you should wake up at the same time, workout, shower – whatever you normally would do to get ready for work – before you start working. Most of all, try to embrace the “morning person” mentality – it will help boost your productivity, not to mention the overall mental and physical health benefits that may come with it.

2. Adhering to a consistent routine: Maybe it’s eating meals at the same time every day, getting a workout in during lunch, or grabbing a coffee at your favorite coffee shop: having a set daily schedule helps. You have newfound flexibility in a work-from-home lifestyle, but you should create and maintain a routine – consistency helps create structure where it doesn’t exist.

3. Creating a space for work: It can be convenient to grab your laptop and start working wherever you want, but this can blur the lines between work and home. You should pick a place in your home where you set up for work each day, whether it is a separate home office or a desk in a distinct area of the home. It is important to have that physical space so that when you’re there you’re fully engaged, and when you leave it, you’ve both physically and mentally “left the office.”

4. Communicating even more with your teammates: You might not realize it, but the frequent informal touchpoints at the office are essential to maintaining a strong working relationships. When you’re at home, scheduling regular, short check-ins – both full-team and one-on-one with team members – is often helpful to help ensure everyone is on the same page and feeling appropriately supported. During these check-ins, you should communicate not just about your projects, but also about things that impact your team dynamic, such as how people are feeling about their workload, when you may be away from your desk, and if you can do anything to improve your support for your teammates.

5. Finding a balance between your work life and your personal life: Working from home provides flexibility, but it is important to set boundaries between work and home life. That could mean reserving every Wednesday evening to cook dinner with your partner or taking your furry friend on a lunchtime walk on Fridays. Achieving a healthy balance will help you maximize your productivity and engagement while working, but also ensure you’re present and happy with your family and friends when you’re not.

When giving advice to people early in their career, I often say to go work on a losing political campaign. This is often met with surprise. Isn’t the point winning? But there is so much to learn from working for the underdog on a scrappy campaign that doesn’t have the resources or talent of their competitors. Here are five things I learned from my first job— a statewide campaign in New York where the candidate ended up dropping out before the primary.

1. Focus on Your Path to Victory

Even longshot candidates need to spend time thinking about how they win. Who is their base? How do they expand it? What motivates these voters? How do we reach them and energize them?

For underdog campaigns, this often involves creative thinking and a Hail Mary pass or two. For our team, charting a path and understanding all of the small steps that could lead us to victory made the impossible seem possible to staff and supporters. It instilled confidence and kept us focused.

By nature, campaigns are messy with lots of distractions. It takes discipline to stay focused, push out your message and connect with the voters you need to turn out for you.

2. Step Up and Fill the Gap

On an underfunded and understaffed campaign, there are lots of opportunities to raise your hand and take on a new assignment – organize volunteers, knock doors in an unfamiliar neighborhood or staff the candidate. But perhaps more importantly, it’s an environment where you learn to step up – without being asked – to fill the gaps and find a way forward.

Without someone telling you exactly what to do and how to do it every step of the way, you’re forced to problem solve on a daily basis. These are great opportunities to stretch yourself and think creatively, especially since the stakes are low and any effort you make is going to be appreciated. Getting in the habit of just doing what needs to be done—and building the muscle to do it instinctively—is an invaluable asset that will serve you well in any future career.

3. Learn from the Missteps

You get a lot of opportunities to make a mistake – there isn’t training, you probably don’t really know what you are doing and it’s a fast paced environment.

In my first week as a campaign scheduler, I made a big mistake. I didn’t realize there were two airports in New York City and sent the candidate to the wrong one. While I was enjoying a day off, he almost missed the state nominating convention.

But in the process, I learned you can’t assume that things will run smoothly and the importance of actively managing projects. I’ll also never forget that LaGuardia and JFK are two very different airports.

4. Work Hard and Smart

Even after putting in 16-hour days seven days a week, my first campaign job ended before the primary. But all of that hard work didn’t take place in a vacuum – the other campaigns saw what we were able to accomplish with limited resources and a number of other challenges. I ended up getting a job working for the winning candidate.

Hard work is a requirement for campaigns, but showing you can work smart at the same time is a differentiator.

5. Take Time to Appreciate the People Around You

In my first job, I had the chance to be in rooms and learn from people with years of experience. With a small staff, the line between recent college graduate and seasoned political consultant just wasn’t as sharp. This allowed me to hear how our consultants approached an issue, formulated a message and managed the candidate. I still think back on some of their advice when confronted with a tricky situation.

Campaigns give you the opportunity to meet and work alongside really smart and talented people. You always learn something – and in the process can make lifelong friends.

The push to greater transparency across the health system hit the fast-track at the end of 2019 with the Trump Administration unveiling its latest proposal that would require greater disclosure of negotiated prices between health plans and hospitals. While the Administration’s plan represents a bold change in publicizing negotiated rates, it also underscores a prevailing tension around the type and amount of health pricing data that should be disclosed.

The ultimate question – will it make a difference for consumers?

The vast majority of patients generally aren’t up for the challenge of price-shopping for their care, according to recent studies highlighted in the Los Angeles Times. Even for those with a high-deductible health plan – the patients with the most “skin in the game” when it comes to paying upfront for medical services – rarely sought out price information for their care. Instead of embracing the plethora of online pricing tools in the market, patients continued to rely on their doctors and physicians to provide the best direction about their health.

Some argue transparency for the sake of transparency is just the right prescription to fix the ailments and misaligned incentives in our health system today. No doubt the growing affordability challenge from surprise medical billing is the latest example of the harmful, opaque pricing trend that poses a real threat to consumers. But going too far down the transparency path can put consumers at a disadvantage if health care prices go up as a result.

As the Administration and the health system embarks on a new era of transparency, there are some key questions to consider:

How much pricing data can be provided in real-time? The one-click wonder of online shopping has made pricing comparisons between competing retailers a relative breeze. We can get real-time price updates on everything from plane tickets to groceries and lots in between. Getting real-time data on health care prices? That’s a whole different story. A big question for stakeholders will come down to timing relevancy – is 2018 or 2019 pricing data helpful for patients? What is realistic in terms of real-time pricing data that can inform actual health care choices?

What type of data is most meaningful – and useful – for patients? Let’s face it – a big excel sheet of wholesale prices and CPT codes is useful for researchers and academics, but for consumers? Not so much. A big question mark on the push towards greater transparency is how much and what specific data can be translated into direct consumer use, either through updated and innovative apps or to inform new benefits?

What integration and coordination is required between key players in the health system? A key lesson learned from the roll-out of enhanced provider directories is that data-sharing capabilities between doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and health plans vary drastically. If pricing transparency is about aligning incentives in the best interest of consumers, what are the back-end infrastructure and technology needs that need to be prioritized moving forward? This is particularly critical for rural communities where wireless capabilities are still limited and electronic health records aren’t the norm.

Greater transparency can be a starting point for fixing some of the longstanding barriers to better care and better value in our health system, but only if the end consumer is in mind.

Paid media has been in the news a lot lately, from Twitter announcing they’ll no longer allow political and issue advertising to Netflix’s documentary, “The Great Hack” providing an in-depth view of how data was used in the 2016 election to influence voters through social media and most recently, Google’s decision to end highly targeted political advertising. The debate over how and where campaigns influence voters in today’s digital society provides an opportunity to explore the power and relevance of paid media moving into 2020 and beyond. If, how and when to use paid media is the question on every client’s mind. The world of paid media has never been more promising. At the same time, the complexity of paid media continues to increase. For the last three and a half years, I’ve been honing my digital media skills here at Reservoir and have seen how important having a thorough understanding of pros and cons of the wide variety of paid media options is to achieving results. As we’ve honed our strategies, our targeted campaigns have seen significant increases that help strategically amplify our clients’ messages among target audiences. In a crowded media environment, this is no small “feat of strength” (for Seinfeld fans). How we create an uptick in engagement. Rather than focusing on impressions and clicks, our strategy is aimed at reaching discrete audiences in Washington, D.C. and across the country with a vested interest in a given policy issue. With budgets of varying sizes, we’ve been able to pinpoint influential publications on the national and state levels, place messaging on sites frequently trafficked by policymakers and their staff, and consolidate social advertising in geographies with the most active groups of voters. This approach allows us to serve customized ads targeting our core audiences, ultimately producing meaningful results well beyond impressions and clicks. At Reservoir, we take incredible pride in our ability to tackle our clients’ most challenging problems. With our headquarters mere blocks from the White House and U.S. Capitol, a lot of our work focuses on advocacy. In this realm, I believe paid media is still a valuable asset, especially when critical legislative efforts are on the line. What led me to this conclusion. Advocacy efforts require a deep knowledge of the legislative process and an understanding of key constituencies impacted by various policy issues. Our clients come to us because we have a proven record of helping “move the needle” – which, let’s be honest, can mean a lot of different things depending on the client and the ever-changing legislative environment. With that said, when it comes to “moving the needle” a targeted paid media campaign can be a reliable tactic as part of a broader activation strategy, and one that we usually consider when presenting a strategic plan to a client. For many different kinds of projects, paid media can effectively reach a client’s core constituency, activate stakeholders and engage policymakers and thought leaders. To that end, here are some recommendations for developing an impactful issue advocacy paid media campaign: 1. Focus on Your Targets: Rather than a “blot out the sun” approach, identify where media placements will have the most impact – sometimes this isn’t where you would expect, so do your research. 2. Create the Right Mix: Balance your media mix in a way that creates a surround sound with multiple touchpoints for your core audience – radio, social, digital, TV, print – it all can be fair game if it reaches your stakeholders and can carry your message effectively. 3. Provide Background: Outside of the D.C. bubble, constituents often need a refresher on policy issues, so be sure to include that background in your messaging or landing page. 4. Call to Action: Once voters understand an issue’s impact on their individual family, community and state, ask them to take action. Create a platform for engagement with options to reach policymakers through social media, phone calls, emails, or dare I say it…snail mail. 5. Create “Buzz”: A focused mix of targeted advertising among the right, engaged core constituency will get people talking and ultimately drive results. Just wait until you hear people talking about an advertising campaign you helped launch – it’s exciting!

A driver honks during the morning commute. A toddler spits out a home-cooked meal. A stranger’s face lights up with a huge smile after you hand him the credit card he dropped. We get feedback all the time, so why can feedback in the workplace be so intimidating?

I had the pleasure of attending a Together We Lead event on feedback recently. The forum, led by the Washington Area Women’s Foundation, focused on how to demystify the inherent concerns around feedback and help leaders continually learn how we can better deliver and receive feedback to advance careers and professional endeavors. The event’s takeaways, combined with previous research and experience, help answer three key questions on the topic.

What is feedback?

As hinted above, feedback is more pervasive than we think. In their book, Thanks for the Feedback, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen identify three forms of feedback:

• Appreciation feedback is positive recognition – thanking, acknowledging, motivating or just noticing someone (e.g., “I appreciate the significant effort you put into executing that event; it really paid off, as it went flawlessly.”).
• Coaching feedback aims to help the receiver improve, whether around knowledge, skills or abilities, or to address the feedback giver’s feelings (e.g., “You handed in a strong first draft of this analysis. I thought its clarity could be improved by shortening some of the content, so I want to review those edits with you for future reference.”).
• Evaluation feedback rates against a set of standards to either align expectations and/or inform decision-making (e.g., “You have exceeded expectations against all of the skill and behavior-related standards and have truly earned this promotion.”).

How is feedback effectively delivered?

While there is debate around how and when to deliver critical feedback, there seems to be overall consensus that both positive and negative feedback can have value if delivered in the right way. Here are some key tips to consider before delivering feedback:

• Prepare, prepare, prepare. Know exactly what you’re going to say before delivering the feedback and think through how it may be received. Writing down notes or talking points can help ensure all points are made.
• Sandwich critical feedback in between positive feedback. That said, don’t be so focused on delivering the positive feedback that areas for improvement get buried or glossed over. It’s important to acknowledge both the positive and the constructive feedback, and to give both the time and attention they deserve.
• Be specific. Examples help illuminate the behavior that needs to change or be reinforced. Without concrete instances to point to, both the giver and receiver can lose sight of the key takeaways.
• Focus on impact. For both positive and critical feedback, it’s important not to come off as judgmental. Feedback should focus on how it impacts the giver’s thoughts, actions or feelings (e.g., “You interrupted Joe with a critical comment on his business development idea in today’s staff meeting. I was disappointed I didn’t hear more and left me hesitant about opening up for further conversation.”).
• Encourage discussion. A feedback giver may have thoughts on how to address an issue moving forward, but to deliver maximum benefit, the giver should help the receiver come to his or her own conclusion. Discussion will help foster a genuine understanding of what needs to change or continue and will put the person receiving the feedback in the best possible position to grow and improve.

How is feedback effectively received?

Learning to effectively receive feedback takes regular practice. To gain maximum benefit from the feedback you receive, here are some key considerations:

• Be open. If someone is taking the time to give feedback, listen to what he or she has to say as he or she is most likely trying to be helpful. If it’s critical commentary, try to understand where it’s coming from and how you can resolve perceptions or change behaviors moving forward.
• Ask for clarity. If something is not clear, speak up. Leaving a meeting after feedback is delivered with confusion or questions will not help you grow.
• Know the next steps. If you don’t have an action plan to incorporate the feedback moving forward, things will likely not change. Talk about what happens next – or set a time to do so – before ending the conversation.

We take feedback very seriously at Reservoir. From our client questionnaire, to our ongoing manager-managee check-in meetings and our 360-degree annual performance management process, we proactively and regularly seek feedback. These key channels for feedback support one of our core values to Be Substantive. When we know more, can we do more for our colleagues, clients and partners.

In the last decade, some of the largest and most successful companies have engaged in an employee perks arms race. Apple* holds regular beer bashes for their employees, complete with free drinks, food and live music. Dropbox hires chefs from Michelin-starred restaurants to serve food in its free cafeteria. Amazon lets employees bring their pets to work.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure employees enjoy these gestures—and I, for one, would love to bring my ferocious six-month-old kitten to work. However, in terms of advancing a company’s culture in concrete and lasting ways, these perks fall short. That’s especially true for millennials, who now make up the biggest chunk of the workforce, and for whom these benefits are presumably meant to entice.

A landmark Gallup study found that, rather than cheap gestures, millennials want growth and opportunity at work. Eighty-seven percent of millennials rate “professional or career growth and development opportunities” as important to them in a job. Although it’s clearly a priority for employees, employers aren’t meeting this need—less than half of respondents said they they’ve had opportunities to grow in the past year. Perhaps most worrisome, less than 20 percent of millennials surveyed for the study said they receive regular feedback—a key ingredient for personal and professional growth.

The data here are clear: businesses should prioritize meaningful growth opportunities for their employees over one-off morale boosters, like buying a ping pong table or installing a beer tap in the office lobby.

A recent Wall Street Journal article on hiring practices brings an interesting perspective to this conundrum, and what it means to assess candidates on “cultural fit.” If you only hire people you want to “get a beer with,” you’ll end up with a company where everyone looks, acts, and thinks the same way.

For any workplace, that kind of homogeneity is a bad thing, but for a strategic communications firm, it’s deadly. Outside perspectives aren’t just “nice to have” or an element that helps us check a box. This diversity of experience is a fundamental part of the business strategy; it drives our purpose and gives meaning to our work.

One of the things I love about Reservoir is the depth of career, cultural, and educational backgrounds that we bring to every project that comes in the door. We have team members who have run entire branches of the largest public relations firms in the world, policy experts, former lab researchers, chief spokespeople and journalists.

Every day, we bring these diverse perspectives to bear on our clients’ most important opportunities and challenges. This atmosphere is also richly rewarding for employees; all of us get the chance learn from our colleagues’ depth and diversity of expertise.

When I was interviewing at Reservoir about a year ago, I asked a pretty standard question to my now-colleague Greg Jarvis: “What do you like about working here?” He said that as a rapidly growing firm, he was excited about the fact that Reservoir’s opportunities are also his own. The company’s successes and growth, he explained, is motivating factor to do his best work.

Greg’s answer provided a window into a company culture where employees want to consistently deliver good work, grow with the organization and advance its values. We’re not without our perks here at Reservoir (and as anyone will tell you, I’m a “pizza Thursday” evangelist), but trendy employee benefits should never be confused with, or distract from, company culture.

Company culture has everything to do with employees who are bought into the mission and vision of the organization, and almost nothing to do with the Michelin-starred chefs in your cafeteria.

* None of the companies mentioned are Reservoir clients.

This piece originally appeared in the October 2019 edition of O’Dwyers Magazine.

Communicating the value of one’s products to a variety of stakeholders (patients, payers, providers, policymakers, etc.) is nothing new. Biopharmaceutical companies have been doing this for decades through a variety of channels.

However, the obligation to communicate more openly and explicitly has grown substantially. Recent advances in medicine have led us to a new generation of therapies that have the potential to be curative. These treatments often fall into the category of cell and gene therapies and are revolutionary because they address not just the symptoms of the disease, but correct the underlying genetic basis of disease or the body’s ability to fight it at a cellular level. These new generation medicines also challenge traditional thinking around medicines because many of them may be effective after only a single administration, as opposed to the familiar model of ongoing therapy.

While the science is amazing, the price tag for these new medicines is such that many commentators have wondered if growing numbers of these therapies will create an unsustainable financial burden for the health care system. Part of addressing that critique is being willing to fully engage in the discussion around price and value.

For many companies, it may feel like they face two equally undesirable choices – engage in a fraught public conversation that is front and center in the political dialogue or leave it to others to define the value of their products.

While there are many nuances in the content and timing of communication, the fundamental choice about whether or not to communicate is no longer optional, particularly for this new generation of products.

There is no benefit in shying away from the discussion; companies need to lean in and make their case, which will be a benefit to them, but equally a benefit to informing the larger societal discussion. Ducking the discussion only furthers mistaken conclusions and puts at risk the substantial progress that is being made.

In thinking about communicating around value, companies need to address three complementary areas:

1. The Value: The value of therapies can be expressed as the benefit to patients but also benefits to the system (offsets, etc.) and, more broadly, society. Some of the societal benefits may be economic, but we shouldn’t neglect recognizing the non-economic factors that may be equally or more meaningful to patients and families. Wherever possible, it is important to quantify these benefits and understand how the various stakeholders benefit. It is likewise important to actually engage with those stakeholders and have meaningful conversations about how these therapies can work within their structures.
2. The Price. The price and the value are not the same. In fact, in many cases the value will exceed the price. The price of therapies needs to be based on understandable metrics that can be clearly communicated to payers and policymakers. That doesn’t mean that there should be a single metric or approach to govern pricing – that’s a flawed idea – but companies should be prepared to describe how they arrived at their price.
3. The System. There are a number of important systemic questions to address about how to measure and pay for value that accrues from a single administration. However, we should acknowledge that the health care system already pays large amounts for singular events, like heart transplants, that may have less long-term benefit than some of these therapies. What has been less tested is the idea of paying for medicines on a singular rather than ongoing basis. Companies need to be engaged in this discussion, informing it, and working closely with payers and policymakers to develop solutions. Part of leadership in this area is helping lead the policy dialogue.

Of course, these communications need to be sequenced thoughtfully in the lead up to your product launch. Communicating either too early or too late may create headaches by sending unintended signals or failing to adequately prepare your stakeholders.

Despite the challenges, we should acknowledge that these are great “problems” to have. Increasingly, it appears that more and more serious genetic diseases may be in reach of a cure. Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, speaking about gene therapy with 60 Minutes, said: “Here’s another dream. There are 7,000 genetic diseases for which we know the precise DNA misspelling. Couldn’t this same strategy, this same set of principles work for lots of those, maybe someday all of them?”

Most of us know someone whose life has been altered by a rare disease and understand that this kind of progress is cause for celebration.

The companies developing these potentially curative therapies are making a tremendous contribution to society – they can enhance that contribution by taking leadership in discussing the questions of value, price, and system reform.

Robert Schooling is the Founder and President of Reservoir Communications Group. He was formerly Chief Advocacy and Alliance Development Officer for WellPoint, Inc. (now Anthem, Inc.), and President, Americas for APCO Worldwide. 

As children, many of us learned the nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me.” Unfortunately, most of us also learned the painful lesson that this convenient playground comeback isn’t really true. As communicators, we know especially well how powerful words can be. An inspiring speech can spark a great movement for positive change, while misplaced words and miscommunications can have tragic consequences.

When it comes to health, communication about a patient’s diagnosis, prognosis and treatment plan is a crucial element of their care. Outside of clinical settings, the words we use when we talk about sickness and health more broadly also matter, especially when the condition we are discussing is stigmatized.

Our culture stigmatizes many health conditions, leading patients to feel judgement or shame. Stigma arises when patients are perceived to be somehow responsible for their disease – as is the case with obesity and smoking-related lung disease. Stigma also surrounds conditions that negatively impact social interactions and patients’ ability to function in society, like substance use disorder and mental illness.

It’s no surprise that recent research shows patients with highly-stigmatized “invisible” health challenges, like migraine disease or other chronic pain conditions, often hide their disease at work. Outside the workplace, conditions affecting the most intimate and private parts of our lives—like sexual health disorders—are also highly stigmatized. Stigma is painful on a personal level, but it also affects how we seek care. Research consistently shows that stigma can deter treatment-seeking behavior and even adversely affect the quality of care a patient receives.

The language we use to describe these conditions can perpetuate or dispel stigma. Thoughtful, compassionate speech can change attitudes and set the stage for evidence-informed policy changes that benefit people living with stigmatized conditions. To help reduce stigma, consider these tips when writing or speaking about health conditions:

Always use person-centered language.

Labeling patients with their disease, like calling someone an “addict” or a “diabetic,” gives the impression that they are no more than their disease. It’s also out of style. The Associated Press Stylebook, known to many journalists as the “bible” for precise writing, made an interesting update in 2017 to recommend writers “avoid words like alcoholic, addict, user and abuser unless they are in quotations or names of organizations.” In the case of drug addiction, this change in language shifts the “blame” from the person to the condition. Using person-centered or person-first language (“a person living with lung cancer”) affirms their personhood and builds compassion. Using personal narratives has also been shown to increase support for policies that benefit patients with stigmatized conditions. People are more than the disease they are battling, and it’s important that our language reflect that distinction.

Stick to the science.

Using scientific language rather than colloquialisms can help avoid value judgements and stay objective. For example, it is common slang to refer to drug tests as “clean” or “dirty” rather than “positive” or “negative,” as we do for other medical tests. The slang descriptors can perpetuate negative beliefs about drug use and the people affected by disease.

Focus on the positive.

Emphasizing the availability and effectiveness of treatment options for stigmatized conditions can change perceptions about them, reinforcing that they are medical conditions and not personal flaws. Greater awareness of treatment options can also encourage people to seek appropriate care for their conditions.

At Reservoir, we know the power of communication to change attitudes, impact policy, and ultimately improve public health. We know that words matter, especially when you are working to empower better clinical outcomes. Language can be used to reinforce the negative biases that perpetuate stigma and create barriers to treatment, or it can be used to promote wellness and the dignity of every person. We are proud to work with clients every day to shape the public dialogue around health, mobilizing words to heal rather than hurt.