Health Has Entered Its Most Influential Era
Health no longer lives only in the doctor's office. It's in our group chats, on our wrists, and in the questions, we type into AI search.
That was the heart of our recent Adweek House HQ Group Chat discussion, Health Has Entered Its Most Influential Era, co-moderated by Adweek's Jenny Rooney, Chief Brand and Community Officer, and Craig Romanok, Chief Commercial Officer of Digitas Health/Publicis Health. Leaders from across healthcare, technology, and marketing came together to talk about how people experience, process, and act on health information today.
The panel featured Peter Sherr, Chief Marketing Officer at Noom; Katie Baldwin, Vice President of Consumer Marketing for Immunology at AbbVie; Allison Ceraso, Chief Creative Officer at Digitas Health; Matt McNally, Global CEO of Publicis Health; and Fannie McWatt, Head of Data & AI Strategy at Publicis Health.
Craig Romanok put it plainly: "Health is seriously everywhere around us... We don't look at healthcare as a category. It is woven into the seams of everything we do each and every day." For us at Publicis Health, that means health isn't just intersecting with modern life; it's driving it. Allison Ceraso said it best: "Health isn't in culture. I think right now health is our culture. They are synonymous."
From Information to Guidance
This shift changes what people need from us. Giving them product information isn't enough anymore. We have to help them find their way through complex, often lifelong conditions. As Matt McNally explained, "We're really moving from this moment of empowering people and giving them the agency to make decisions to now... how do we navigate people and help them through the healthcare journey?"
Part of that journey is making sense of all the data people collect about themselves. Peter Sherr described the challenge: "There's a lot of data masquerading as answers. It's very overwhelming for people that have these rings and wearables. There's so much coming at you. It's really the companies that can help synthesize that information."
Starting with Human Truths
In a crowded space, the work that stands out begins with real life, not a transaction.
“The most compelling health brands and health companies are leading with human truths, not product truths, not mechanism of action, not a diagnosis,” Allison Ceraso said. “They’re really tapping into what keeps people up at night.
The creative standard for health communications has risen as well. As Katie Baldwin emphasized, health advertising now commands the same “attention, focus, and creativity” as any other category.
Technology That Earns Trust
As data and generative AI move faster, trust, accuracy, and humanity must come first. Fannie McWatt cautioned, "AI is somewhat lazy, and it's built to make you feel confident in its answers. We have to be really careful when we're building the AI algorithms and structuring evidence building AI that deserves our trust."
The goal isn't to replace the personal side of care but to strengthen it. As Matt McNally concluded, "I'm excited for AI to make us hyper-human and bring us back to the humanity of healthcare. Healthcare is the only journey we're all on together."
That is the work ahead: using data to anticipate what people need, building trust through evidence, and telling stories rooted in human truth. As health becomes more influential across every part of life, the opportunity for our industry is not simply to provide more information. It is to help people find their way forward.