For decades, MedTech marketers have sought to build awareness, relying on the assumption that when people understand a health issue and learn what action to take, behavior change and improved outcomes will follow. Today, awareness remains necessary, but it is no longer the primary barrier to better health outcomes. The challenge is increasingly one of trust and confidence.
The reality for patients is far more complicated. People have access to more health information than ever, yet many struggle to know what to trust. Edelman's latest Trust and Health findings show that people's confidence in their ability to find answers to health questions and make informed health decisions has fallen significantly. This growing confidence gap has important implications for MedTech companies. Patients are not simply looking for more information. They are looking for trusted guidance that helps them navigate increasingly complex decisions. Patients increasingly turn to creators, peers and others with lived experience to help them sift through conflicting guidance and gain confidence in their decisions.
The result is a more fragmented trust landscape, where people often validate information across multiple sources before deciding what to believe and how to act.
With this uncertainty, MedTech companies today are increasingly recognizing that information alone rarely drives consistent progress. The organizations making a difference for patients today are taking a different approach, pairing clinical credibility with authentic storytelling and cultural relevance that move people from awareness to action.
The most effective campaigns today are designed not simply to inform audiences, but to help them navigate decisions. That shift is particularly important at a time when patients play an increasingly active role in their healthcare decisions. Whether evaluating screening options, learning about diagnostic technologies or discussing treatment pathways with their providers, patients expect to be informed participants in the conversation and ultimate decision. They can no longer be viewed as a secondary audience reached through HCPs. They are critical stakeholders in their care journey.
Our recent support for Hologic's Ultimate Defense campaign illustrates what that looks like in practice. Despite decades of education campaigns and the availability of effective screening tools, cervical cancer continues to affect thousands of women in the United States each year. The challenge was not simply to tell women that cervical cancer is preventable or that Pap and HPV testing are important. We needed to find a way to make prevention feel personal enough to motivate action.
Ultimate Defense centered on WNBA player Erica Wheeler, who sadly lost her mother to cervical cancer. Wheeler’s commitment to sharing her family’s experience elevated the campaign beyond statistics and screening recommendations, reaching women on a personal level through lived experience. Her story created an emotional connection that helped make the issue relatable and the importance of screening more tangible.
Clinical evidence remains essential to support campaigns like these, but personal stories help people see themselves in the issue, creating the trust and emotional connection that make information resonate. Wheeler’s story carried credibility because it came from personal experience, not advocacy by proxy.
Information changes minds. Relevance changes behavior. The most effective health campaigns build on that trust by connecting important health issues to cultural conversations, communities and moments that already command attention. Culture has become one of the most powerful accelerants of attention, particularly as audiences become harder to reach through traditional awareness efforts alone.
For Ultimate Defense, that meant tapping into the powerful momentum surrounding women's basketball. Wheeler wasn't simply a spokesperson; she represented a meaningful connection between the issue, the audience and a cultural moment that was generating significant interest and conversation. The cultural momentum surrounding women’s basketball created an opportunity to introduce screening conversations to audiences that may not otherwise have engaged with the issue.
The final shift comes from how engagement itself is built.
Patients today consume overlapping and often conflicting information from a virtually unlimited range of channels and platforms. They move between earned media coverage, social content, creator voices, paid experiences and conversations with their doctors and nurses, often trying to validate information across multiple touchpoints before deciding what to believe and how to act. As patients become more engaged decision-makers, they increasingly expect information that helps them understand their condition, as well as the technologies and innovations shaping their care.
In this environment, consistency matters as much as creativity.
That reality demands a fully integrated approach. Ultimate Defense was designed as a connected ecosystem, with each piece of content and channel playing a distinct role in moving audiences closer to action. A post-campaign brand lift study demonstrated that women exposed to the campaign were significantly more likely to discuss screening with their healthcare provider.
Wheeler's story created connection with the women who most needed to hear the message. Cultural relevance accelerated the opportunity to earn attention. An audience-focused content strategy reflected today’s complicated information ecosystem and helped ensure we could meet women where they are.
For MedTech brands today, delivering on the promise to improve health outcomes and advance patient care requires a broader view of what drives behavior change. Generating awareness is a start, but lasting success comes from helping people navigate increasingly complex health decisions with confidence. As patients take more ownership of their health decisions, marketers have an opportunity and responsibility to engage them directly. The future belongs to organizations that can combine scientific credibility, human connection and cultural relevance to turn information into action.
Bryan Horner, Senior Vice President, Edelman Health.