By Julie Croner
VP, Community Development
Health Union

As the latest wave of FDA untitled and warning letters hit the pharma community, I’m seeing brand managers sitting on the edge of their seats, scrolling through LinkedIn with a knot in their stomach.

The question isn’t if the next wave is coming for influencer marketing, it’s how deep it will go.

Between the radical transparency push from the FDA and the FTC’s expanded definition of what counts as advertising, many brands are questioning if their 2025 strategies are sound. 

Everyone is looking for a playbook. But here’s the thing: we wrote it years ago.

The “Trend” Everyone is Chasing

If you’ve read the 2026 EMARKETER or HubSpot reports, you’ve seen the buzzwords: Certifications for Content Creators. 

We all know that working with creators can be a regulatory gamble, so it’s no surprise many are pushing for standards and training to be put in place. 

But at Health Union, this isn’t a 2026 pivot. It’s our 15-year-old DNA. We didn’t wait for the FDA to start sending letters to prioritize safety. In fact, we’ve been training patients and caregivers in these principles for years. 

In 2019, the team at Health Union launched a platform of courses for our network which included content like impactful storytelling, FTC regulations, and best practices for working with healthcare collaborations. 

But then we took it a step further. 

In 2023, we launched our Patient Leader Certification Program, in collaboration with the Society for Participatory Medicine, because we saw the quality of life statement traps and the FTC disclosure hurdles coming a mile away.

My background is unique, as I didn’t come to this line of work originally. I was drawn to it after the patient leader community single handedly helped me regain my health. I knew I wanted to be a part of this movement impacting patients and caregivers around the globe.

 As I started my own journey as a patient leader, I saw first hand how brilliant leaders were looked down upon because they didn’t have an MD or PhD after their names. And as I moved through experience on the industry side, I saw how marketers were terrified to touch influencer marketing because vetting these individuals was a manual, error-prone, regulatory nightmare.

Here at Health Union, we solved both those problems. We built an influencer training program that turns passionate patients and caregivers into certified professionals who understand the guardrails as well as your own internal teams. 

Health Union Certified Patient Leaders: Your Brand’s Best Friend

We don’t just teach patients and caregivers how to take and post pretty photos. Our 12-lesson curriculum is a rigorous bootcamp for responsible social health. When you work with a Health Union Certified Patient Leader, you are getting someone who has mastered three critical tiers:

Module 1: Powerful Storytelling

• What the Patient Leader Learns: Tailoring your story without crossing into medical claims and adapting your message to your audience.
• Why the Brand Manager Wins: First drafts that actually pass. Fewer rounds of “no” from your legal team.

Module 2: Meaningful Engagement

• What the Patient Leader Learns: Building strong communities, navigating social algorithms, and avoiding burnout.
• Why the Brand Manager Wins: Authentic reach and messaging that doesn’t feel like a sterile corporate broadcast.

Module 3: Responsible Leadership

• What the Patient Leader Learns: Deep-dives into FTC guidelines, copyright, health equity, and effectively collaborating with companies. 
• Why the Brand Manager Wins: Zero-risk compliance. They know exactly how and where to disclose and how to work as a partner with your team. 

Don’t Just Adapt to 2026. Lead It.

While the rest of the industry is scrambling to standardize their creator partnerships, we’re already sitting on years of experience from our Social Health Network. 

The choice for pharma marketers right now is simple: You can spend your 2026 budget fixing errors and responding to letters or you can spend it tapping into the most authentic, vetted, and compliant voices in the industry.

I’m incredibly proud of the Patient Leader Certification program we’ve built. Not just because it protects brands, but because it gives patients the professional credibility they deserve.

Let’s stop waiting for that first influencer letter. It’s time to set the gold standard by tapping into health leaders who already know the ropes. That’s how we stop those letters from reaching our brands in the first place.