By Tim Armand
President and co-founder, Health Union
December 20, 2018

While our office is wrapping up the end of the year, celebrating our accomplishments and the relationships we’ve built with one another, we’re spending a lot of time crunching numbers to quantify the kind of impact we’ve made this year as a business.

At Health Union, we invest all of our focus and energy into cultivating our online health communities, which are designed to make a difference in the lives of people living with chronic conditions by providing the information and support they seek. Our partners invest in the media, market research, and clinical services offerings we provide and leverage the reach and engagement within Health Union’s condition-specific communities.

And we can tell all of these investments are working by analyzing data, pulling ROI metrics—but how do we know we’re really making an impact? How do we know our business is truly making a difference in the lives of people living with chronic illnesses?

One way is through the acknowledgment and recognition we’ve received from the public health sector. Throughout the past year, we’ve made it a priority to use our learnings to help demonstrate the value of online communities and positively impact patient care–particularly outside the pharma space and in the public health arena.

Spearheaded by Chief Community Officer Amrita Bhowmick, a publications committee, comprised of a cross-functional team of people from our Community, Insights and Research & Analytics departments, was established to define, develop and collaborate on publication opportunities that are supported by Health Union’s proprietary survey data across all of our current condition-specific online health communities. In 2018 alone, seven submissions were accepted, including an oral presentation at the 2018 Annual Meeting & Expo of the American Public Health Association (APHA) on perceived treatment satisfaction and effectiveness among patients with chronic health conditions.

By demonstrating the ability of Health Union’s online health communities to impact patient engagement and care through peer-reviewed abstracts and manuscripts, we’re achieving the recognition in the public health sector that validates the fact that online health communities can be a valuable resource for impactful patient-centric research. See a list of all Health Union’s published works.

In addition to Health Union’s participation in the academic public health community, we’ve taken big steps to partner with various advocacy groups who work closely with the health communities we serve. Our partnerships with groups like the CHAMP Migraine Coalition and the Multiple Sclerosis Association of America allow us to demonstrate what we’ve learned by listening to and connecting people, which in turn translates to better serving those impacted, every day.

This is only the beginning of what we can accomplish together. In the new year, Health Union’s commitment to helping people live better with chronic conditions will continue to grow–with new communities, new content, and new relationships that will continue to evolve our understanding of how to truly meet people where they are by providing the connection, information and validation they deserve.