How Healthcare Marketers Can Support Pride Month

Diversity and inclusion are two of the most important values in the workplace and have become a topic of high priority for many healthcare companies. As a healthcare marketer, you are the face of your companies and clients. It is important to follow the trends and remember what your healthcare brand truly stands for. Here are three things that you, as a healthcare marketer, can do to show support for Pride Month.

Set clear goals

The first question to ask yourself when thinking about supporting Pride month is why are you doing it? Healthcare marketers will often create campaigns around those who identify as LGBTQ+ without taking their perspectives into consideration. In order to effectively show support as a healthcare marketer, set some short-term and long-term goals for Pride month as well as your healthcare company’s own diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. In today’s world, healthcare companies need to do more than just depict same-sex couples in their advertisements or toss the Pride Flag on their products or logos, especially when their audience includes customers who can see healthcare companies “jumping on the bandwagon.” You can advocate for a more diverse and inclusive team working closely with HR. Remind your colleagues how they can help push the needle forward.

Understand the flag

Before you associate the Pride Flag with your healthcare brand, you should understand what the flag symbolizes in the LGBTQ+ community. Since its origin in 1977, the Flag has changed quite a few times. Originally, the Pride Flag consisted of 8 colors stripes, with each color representing a different aspect of queer pride (see below):

Source: Rainbow flag (LGBT). (2023, May 15). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_flag_(LGBT)

Hot Pink was removed because fabric and dye in that color was hard to find, which gave way to the familiar 6-color flag you see today. Eventually, the city of Philadelphia added two other colors in 2017 -- black and brown -- to symbolize people of color that were also part of the community.

Now that you know some of the history behind the Pride Flag, let’s talk about how you, as a healthcare marketer, can celebrate Pride month through your healthcare company in a more meaningful way.

Analyze, analyze, analyze!

Let’s take a peek at companies that are celebrating Pride month and how.

Since 2012, the famous sports gear company Nike has been releasing a collection called BETRUE as a grassroots effort led by Nike employees that is focused on the advance of equity in sports. This collection, which was created and managed by designers that identify as LGBTQ+, continues to be released each year in June to support Pride month. Nike’s BETRUE advertisements also feature athletes who are demonstrating their visibility in an industry where LGBTQ+ people are still working hard to be included.

As a healthcare marketer, you can follow the same structure. Simply seek out the different opportunities your healthcare company has to offer and make sure to be inclusive, not just towards the customers, but also to those who are working with you!

Whether you identify under the LGBTQ+ spectrum, or you are a proud ally, the end goal is to align your healthcare company’s goals with Pride Month while celebrating and supporting the LGBTQ+ community.