The endemic health landscape is undergoing a fundamental shift. For years, the model was a one-way street: a patient searched for a symptom, and a site provided a static, clinical answer. But in an era of AI-driven, “zero-click” results, general health information has become a commodity.
There is one thing, however, that will never be a commodity: the lived experience of people managing the realities of life with a condition.
AI cannot replicate the raw humanity of a diagnosis—the fears, the small victories, and the practical frustrations that define a life with disease. It doesn’t know what bra to buy after surgery or how to tell a small child that their parent is sick. This deep human connection is why people are turning to online health communities now more than ever.
The Gold Standard of Connection
As the term “community” becomes the latest industry buzzword and traffic to traditional endemic giants continues to plummet, it is no surprise that health companies are placing an increased importance on building and marketing their community solutions. But as marketers consider community partners, an essential piece is sometimes forgotten: A community should be a meticulously crafted ecosystem built on trust, stewardship, and shared humanity, not just a URL with articles and a comment section.
At Health Union, we don’t just participate in the community space; we pioneered it and set the standard. We originated the modern online health community model 15 years ago, and continue to raise the bar on how communities are built and managed every day. Often followed (but never equaled), we have spent over a decade operating the gold standard of community platforms by prioritizing the 50M+ people our 125+ condition-specific communities support.
At Health Union, we believe a community should be:
- Human-Led: It requires a dedicated team of trained experts building and cultivating connection, not a skeleton crew and an algorithm. We employ a rigorous launch process and a large community management team led by experts in public health who are in the trenches of our communities every day, responding to comments, cultivating connection, and ensuring safety.
- People-First: A true community is built for patients and with patients, not built for advertisers. It should be anchored in authentic content people want to read, not just prioritized for SEO. At Health Union, we house the industry’s largest collection of patient-generated content, with more than 41,000 articles written by real patients and caregivers, covering meaningful, emotional topics that matter.
- Safe and Meaningful: Our communities prioritize “lived-in” experiences, the triumphs and struggles that machines simply cannot replicate, which makes understanding the patients in our communities deeply non-negotiable. We run large scale surveys (with 60k+ voluntary responses annually!) and polls to better understand the people we support, so we can better serve their actual needs.
Why Partnering With Community Platforms that Prioritize Patient-Written Content and Expert Stewardship Matters for Marketers
For marketers, the distinction is critical: Communities truly built for and managed by people drive real outcomes not just for patients and HCPs, but for advertisers as well. When we align brand messaging with patients at critical decision-making moments engaging in content that helps them along their path, we foster the confidence needed for doctor discussions that translate into real conversion. Our data has proven that:
- Health Union community visitors drive 241% more conversions than those who haven’t visited a community.
- 1 in 10 people receive a new diagnosis within 60 days of visiting a Health Union community – a vital window for brand intervention.
- We can deliver superior performance at scale across every key metric – not just Audience Quality. Health Union is proving community activation no longer has to be small or niche, we can drive incredible reach and ROI.
The Essential Questions
So ask yourself before you choose a community partner: Who is actually managing the space? What kind of content lives there? Most importantly, how is this community truly understanding and serving the people who matter most—those living with chronic and rare conditions? The answers really do make a difference for your strategy and performance.
We’d love to talk more about what sets Health Union apart.
