Building Trust and Authority in Healthcare Content with Betsey O’Brien

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Establishing trust and authority is a prerequisite for any nonprofit organization to improve the health of its community through digital communication and education. In this episode, Spencer Brooks and Betsey O’Brien explore the strategies and challenges of crafting reliable, empathetic healthcare content. If you are a nonprofit communicator aiming to enhance your digital presence and build lasting trust with your audience, this episode is for you.

About the guest

Betsey O’Brien is an independent writer, editor and speaker focused on the complexities of human health. Her writing and editing practice covers the full spectrum of health, with special emphasis on mental well-being. She has worked with some of the country’s best-known mental health organizations, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance and Inseparable, along with individual experts in brain health, eating disorders and trauma-informed care.

Resources

Contact Betsey

 

Full Transcript

Welcome to Health Nonprofit Digital Marketing, a podcast for nonprofit marketers in the health space. Join us as we discuss how to use the web to drive awareness, engagement and action for health causes. This podcast is part of the thought education of Brooks digital, the web agency for health nonprofits. Now here’s your host, Spencer Brooks.

Spencer Brooks 0026

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Health Nonprofit Digital Marketing. My name is Spencer, and today I’m joined again by Betsy O’Brien. Now if you’re a listener for a long time, you may remember Betsy from season one when we talked about writing better healthcare content. And for those who need a refresher, Betsy is an independent writer, editor and speaker focused on the complexities of human health, her writing and editing practice covers the full spectrum of health with special emphasis on mental well being. She’s worked with some of the country’s best known mental health organizations, including the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, which I actually think we did a podcast interview with very early in season one, as well as Inseparable so I invited Betsy back on the show today to talk about building trust and authority when you’re writing your online healthcare content, and I’m really excited to have her back. So Betsy, welcome back on the show.

Betsy O’Brien 01:27

Thank you, Spencer. I’m excited too, delighted to be here and talking about this topic, which continues to shift and evolve.

Spencer Brooks 01:35

Absolutely well. I want to just kick it off by asking, in your opinion, Betsy, why does trust and authority, why do those things matter when you’re producing online healthcare content, and what, in your opinion, are the consequences if that trust and authority isn’t present?

Betsy O’Brien 01:55

It’s so interesting, too, Spencer, because in the digital world, terms like trust and authority have a very specific meaning when it comes to SEO, and I guess that means, like any good writer who has gone through SEO training and really tries to practice those principles, it means that algorithms trust you and rank you highly. And of course, that’s tremendously important. You want people to be able to find your content, but I really, from the beginning, have felt that trust and authority has to stay also on the human level. No nonprofit I have ever worked for has not wanted to be the number one resource for patients, for medical providers, for the media, for many audiences, and this means humans have to trust us and what’s interesting is that, of course, people are a lot more complicated than algorithms, and so they do not trust automatically. And we seem to be also in a time of unusual levels of fear. About health, about threats to health, and it’s hard for people to know what to believe. And in some cases, authorities we’ve always relied on are being, you know, demonized even, it’s shocking to see this. And fear, fear is tricky, and that means you need to focus your efforts on trust and authority, not only in digital terms, data terms, but also on the human side. And if the biggest risk in my mind of not paying attention to the value of these qualities is that, it’s interesting, because most of the nonprofits I have worked for hate the C word. They don’t like to talk about being in competition with others. They say, gosh, we’re all in it to improve the health of everybody in the US. And I agree with that up to a point, because I also see that we are, as nonprofits, competing for media coverage, for funding, for the very best board members and consulting members to advise us. And that’s why being the lead voice in your field matters so much. You need those things in your corner to be able to draw the support that helps you do what you do.

Spencer Brooks 04:24

I love that you drew the distinction first of all between the trust and authority when it comes to things like SEO versus the human component, because I think you are absolutely right that those things are very different, and at least when I’ve observed, or, you know, when Brooks Digital has done research on how people are evaluating online content and health, it’s usually that after they’ve seen the search results and they’ve clicked through, then they start questioning the human on the other side of it. So in other words, I think the trust and authority when it comes to SEO is just getting you, it’s just table stakes and getting you in those search results. But people are still going through that and going, who wrote this? And can I, can this really be trusted? You know is, can I just go through and really trust anything that I see on the internet?

Betsy O’Brien 05:26

It’s, I mean, we’re living in a time when, again, primary authorities in many fields are not trusted and then there are people who rise up from goodness knows where who gain trust. And you know, you can read media coverage and think to yourself, Wow, this is so exaggerated, or it’s so flattened, or it’s, you know, the reporting of research results can be astounding. So, it’s tricky, man, yeah, and I’m not saying that, the truth is, you have to be excellent at both. You need to rank. It’s very important that people can find your content. Then, as you said, once they’re on your pages, you want to do two things. The first thing you want to do is gain their trust by helping them calm down just a little bit. And the reason I bring that up is that we are so often in healthcare, talking to someone who is newly diagnosed, or someone who is afraid they may have a particular condition, or someone caring for a loved one who is desperate for the straight dope. And it’s great to be scientifically accurate. It’s very important to define terms, but you also want to take care to begin with compassion, because fear kind of flies in the face of absorbing information and understanding it. So those are things that I think play into how good content is written.

Spencer Brooks 07:03

I love that you hit on that because I do think the understanding of who is coming and in what emotional state and for what reason is so critical to being able to match the response, or the type of content that you’re providing and giving, not really just the type, but I think the tone and compassion, right? That’s probably what I mean. The tone of your content to that emotional state is helpful. But there’s, I think there, you know, I would also even point out that the ability to do that depends on knowing even what people are coming for and why, and you know what their emotional state is in the first place. And I think intuitively most comms people know and get that, but it might not be actually built into a content strategy, or it might not be built into when, you know, somebody’s writing this and it’s being reviewed and published, you know, in the midst of the whirlwind, the day to day, you know, when you’re just, go, go, go, go. I got 15 things on my list, I check this off, we publish it, right? You know. And I think that that can be, that can be quite hard. And so I love that you’re calling this to people’s attention.

Betsy O’Brien 08:23

It is. It’s a very high standard that we’re trying to achieve, though, because it can take just as much time to achieve a caring tone as it does to do the extensive reading and research that you need to do as a writer to be medically accurate. Just one example; I write for a prominent nonprofit that has a child health site, and I’ve tackled some really hairy topics. Maybe the worst might have been when we needed to write a page for parents who, actually two parent audiences: one that might have a child waiting for a donor organ, where their life could be at stake. The second group would be parents whose child had just died or was very nearly going to lose their life and were considering donating those organs. Now, can you imagine the state of mind that we’re talking about, and I spent just as much time on tone as reading the science. And that article took a lot longer to do. But I just figure if, if I’m turned off or afraid I’m going to stop reading after two sentences. But if I really want you know, if, the right if, as the writer or editor, I really want to help you. I’m going to stick in there and make sure that you feel like you are hearing directly from me, a human. Sometimes I’m ghostwriting for doctors, and that’s very important too, and in fact, that’s my model. Yeah, when I think of how to do this, I think of the best doctors that I have ever been treated by, and I think about the fact that these docs made me feel seen. They acknowledged my concerns and my fears. They absolutely gave me the straight story, but they did not leave me in the dust. They asked me, have you ever heard of this medical term? And if I said, no, they would define it for me in terms I could really absorb, even if I was afraid. And they also followed up by saying, Here’s other places you can go when you’re ready. Don’t try to read all this at once, but when you’re ready, go to these places, and there will be more information for you. So that’s the kind of the doc in my head when I’m writing or even editing. Very often, content will come to me and a client will say to me, and you update this, and when I respond to the assignment, I say, Yes, I’ll do that. And do I have your permission to warm up the tone so that people can really get what you’re saying. I’ve never had a client say no, and they’re usually pretty happy with the output.

Spencer Brooks 11:12

Yeah, what I think I hear you saying, Betsy, and this is really interesting to me, is that we’re not really just talking about trust in the authority in the sense of, I need to prove to you that I am the dominant expert and you know, and earn your trust that way. But rather, there’s this human component of, if we want people to engage, which is really what building trust and authority is about, it’s just overcoming a barrier so that people will engage and be receptive, right? That we have to build an emotional connection with them. We have to meet them where they’re at to be relatable and to come across as human and in that process, sure, you might build authority, but I think more importantly, you’re building that connection, breaking down the barriers, so that people are going to continue to take a step further with you. Is that right?

Betsy O’Brien 12:08

Yes, that is right. And it’s not that we want to be achieve toxic positivity or sound like a therapist, necessarily. But think about it this way. I can start off by saying, Basal Cell Carcinoma is a very serious condition, and the odds of overcoming it are this percentage and this many people have been diagnosed with it in the past year and so on. I can begin with facts, or I can say something like, if you have been diagnosed with the form of skin cancer known as such and such, you’re probably very worried right now, and you’re not alone. There are millions of people throughout the US and the world who are diagnosed every year. Here’s what you need to know. And you see, I don’t lose any authority by taking that second tone. It’s just that I’ve entered into their world, not my own. I need to, of course, I’m an authority. That’s why you came to my website. Yes, I have scientific information, and yes, I have all the facts, but fear floods the mind, and then if we throw only facts at the fearful mind, we flood it even further, and it’s not that the people will immediately click off, but we’re risking it when we go that way, versus just coming in now and then to say, I see you, and I can imagine where you might be with this now. And it doesn’t take much, but it has to be a conscious, steady effort. The balance is between accuracy, scientific accuracy, and compassion.

Spencer Brooks 13:47

Yeah, it occurs to me that empathy is such a big part of that right where the ability to place yourself in the shoes of who you’re writing for and understand what they’re feeling, in this case, most likely fear, right? And to understand what does life look like through your eyes, and what are you feeling thinking and imagining as you’re reading this? And then, how then, therefore, do I need to talk, talk with you? How do I need to order how I present the information and with this idea of empathy because I do want to spend a little bit of time talking about that. Did you, was this a light bulb moment for you at some point in your career when you said, Hey, I need to be able like I saw this specific instance and all of a sudden it clicked. Or was it something that you slowly developed over time? How did you come to intuitively sense that your tone and approach and addressing fear was so important in gaining people’s trust and helping them stick around

Betsy O’Brien 14:58

Right? Well, I’m dialing my, and back to the first time I might have said this out loud, and I think it was actually in a job interview a long time ago, when we were first going to digital marketing in healthcare, and I was interviewing for a wonderful position with a leading cancer organization. And I think I startled the decision maker across the table by saying, Listen, you know the people who are going to be reading this E newsletter that you are hiring, I hope me, to create, are coming in stoned on fear. There is nothing scarier than a cancer diagnosis. And I know this because, like pretty much everybody else, I’ve known people who had cancer and who died from it. So, we have to think about that when we write this, and I promise you that I will, and I think it was, I think some people think this goes without saying, but it doesn’t necessarily. And you know, almost any health nonprofit can surf its pages and find a few examples where they can do better. Of course, it depends on also knowing who you’re talking to when you are trying to address eight or nine audiences at once, everyone from the newly diagnosed person all the way through to media to healthcare providers. That’s not going to work very well. So there is a case also for audience segmentation and making sure the navigation in your website, perhaps you can direct that to be for patients, for caregivers, for healthcare providers, so that you’re delivering the correct level of, you know, fact and compassion. Incidentally, I even inject a fair amount of compassionate tone when I’m writing for doctors, because they have their own sets of concerns. It this is a really tough time to be provide, providing a lot of healthcare services out there. Yeah? So doctors have their own mindset,

Spencer Brooks 17:08

Yeah, Betsy, one of the things that I was going to ask you about, too, is because I know we’ve, we’ve touched on a few things right now, obviously, the tone being important, empathy, things like that, in order to build trust and authority. But I’m curious if you have other components or things that you’ve observed that contribute to building that trust and authority, or if you really feel like the tone and addressing fear are, the main components? Are there anything else?

Betsy O’Brien 17:43

No, they’re not co equal. In fact, I would say that scientific accuracy, it’s hard to achieve very often when you’re talking about, you know, my own definition of what I do. I talk to people about the complexities of human health, and that means that a subject needs to be looked at from multiple points of view. Usually, before I sit down to write, I read not everything I can get my hands on, because I do, you know it’s important to be efficient and quick too in producing what nonprofits need, but I find that I can’t get the message straight unless I have read several objective sources and that gives me a sense of what accurate would look like and complete, you know, so that, and I know I’ve hit the mark when I get an email back from my client saying, gee, our professional review board took a look at this and felt it was really great. So in other words, medical providers, Docs, social workers, therapists, whoever I am working with, have said this is content that I would back and would share with my own patients. That’s where I’m aiming to be in terms of accuracy. And it helps to have writers who are really, really saturated in your subject matter and who are interested in reading constantly, continuously, so that they have a really good sense of the science. So, it’s got to be both.

Spencer Brooks 19:21

What is your relationship as you’re writing content between the professionals and subject matter experts? Because I would imagine, you know, in your case, you’re probably writing for a number of different types of disciplines or health issues, and I’m positive that you’re more familiar and knowledgeable than most people on these topics, but what does your relationship look like as you’re writing this between, obviously, you’re going to be doing the writing yourself, but then you’re also going to, I’m assuming, be sending that off to as you mentioned, like a medical review board or other professionals. So what does that look like for you as you’re developing content?

Betsy O’Brien 20:07

Oh, boy, it’s it varies all across the board. There are times when I am speaking directly with a researcher who has just released new findings, and my promise to that researcher is that I will explain what has been released in the clearest possible terms without flattening it out, and I see myself as a partner with them in doing that, most top researchers are wonderful, and they know exactly what you’re talking about, because they need grant money all the time to keep their work going. So they are used to describing what they’re doing in lay terms. Very often though, I have no direct connection with a review board or with the professionals, because some of the nonprofits I work for are enormous, and they have multiple committees, and so I might be working with an intermediary and when I’m in that position, I just ask a lot, a lot, a lot of questions. So, I might receive an assignment and say, I’m happy to write about this topic. I’m happy to write about heart trouble and in the infant, you know, in a newborn or an infant. And I might have received a ton of links to information, and I will write back and say, Okay, I have the following six questions. Let me know if you’ve got someone who can answer them by email or any other way. And you know, all of that is with an efficiency I mean, I’m an independent contractor. I need to be sure that I’m delivering value for that nonprofit. So you, sometimes you you’re doing a little mind reading. When there’s the privilege of time, I of course, love to speak directly to docs, to researchers, to scientists, to spokespeople, but I don’t know always count on it. Frequently I am on my own out there in the world, bouncing from the CDC to the popular press to the FDA and other sites, trying to get to the kind of the nexus of where all the communication comes together.

Spencer Brooks 22:05

Yeah, well, let’s talk about that a little bit, because I know that ensuring accuracy and credibility in the in content is important. So I’m curious what your process looks like, and I’m sure, obviously it will depend on what you’re writing about and who you’re working with, but you’ve mentioned things like, you know, being able to ask questions of professionals and doing research or getting sent links. But would you mind expanding on that a little bit? What does that process look like for you as you’re trying to establish that accuracy and credibility?

Betsy O’Brien 22:37

Sure, well, and it very much depends on who I’m working with, I have, for example, written for individual healthcare providers, and many of them, or let’s say, heads of clinics or heads of care organizations on the local level, they may write to me and say, I need an article on depression. Go. In that case. I mean, I might write back and say, Are you thinking about young people, adults, all audiences, you know, just to narrow it down a bit, but in that case, I’m on my own. I’m going to draw on what I may already know, but I might also go looking for a new angle on depression and give that provider a choice of two or three ways to talk about depression. Maybe they’re just looking for a competent page that talks about what depression looks like. How do I know if I am depressed? That word is so widely used, it’s meaningless in a lot of cases. So how do I know right? What are the signs? When should I call my doctor? Things like that. So, it’s highly individual. If I’m working for an enormous healthcare nonprofit, I may be sent 20 links to help my work along, or someone might say, you know, you’ve written about this before. Now we need something that is more focused on this particular audience. Great. I know how to do that. I know how to switch audiences, but sometimes it does take some thinking. It can be extraordinarily hard, for example, to write when you’ve got a split audience. I mean, the article I mentioned where it’s this group of parents who have a child who might soon die, versus this other audience of parents whose children desperately need an organ. If you can imagine trying to cover that territory in about 800 words while providing information about how transplants work, and I can’t think of any higher level of trust anyone would need to have, you know, than that situation, to sign off. So it just, it takes a lot of reading. And that brings me to the point, I mean, sometimes people say to me, geez, you know, why don’t all nonprofits aim for this level of accuracy. And I said, Well, you know, they’re under the gun, like all of this time money pressure from very possibly C level executives. Perhaps your CMO wants this page to rank tomorrow, because it’s a hot topic, and that’s not easy. Trust in a human, as opposed to an algorithm, but even in an algorithm, builds rather slowly. So, I think it pays to invest the time. Maybe there isn’t always time, which means you need to make a note to self to go back and review that page when you can.

Spencer Brooks 25:40

Yeah, well, I think that’s certainly good, good advice. And I know that you know, certainly one of the challenges too, is that you’ve mentioned is you have multiple audiences. And not only does that make you, know, trying to establish trust and credibility like that much harder, because you need to be able to speak to more than one group at a time, you know, but you already have the pressing challenges of accurately describing this information and communicating, which is often complex. Which brings me to another question that I had for you, Betsy, it’s just the challenges, other specific challenges that you’ve encountered when you’re writing this content. I can imagine, you know, you’ve alluded to a few things, but what key challenges have you noticed as you go about doing your job and producing this content?

Betsy O’Brien 26:34

Sure, well, it can be very difficult, for example, to write about new treatments, new therapies or new research findings, because sometimes there aren’t that many authoritative sources you’re going to be able to tap into, and with all due humility and respect to researchers, my father was a cancer researcher, so I grew up knowing how measured and challenging it is to produce even a single credible result. It takes time, but sometimes the people who are behind that work are so close to their subject matter that it may be difficult to get any kind of rounded view of it. I’ve even been in the position with nonprofits where perhaps a partner organization or a supporting organization is behind a treatment, and that’s when you need to be extra scrupulous, and if there aren’t, unless you’re providing sponsored content, and that’s a different story, and that in that case, you in house are not writing it necessarily, but it’s great to be able to tap into skepticism of new treatments, not necessarily that that’s the bent you are going to take, but it will help you be more objective. It’s very much like responsible reporting, where facts are checked and terms are defined. So new treatments can be tricky if you only have one or two points of view, and they may also require you to tell a pretty complex scientific story. Why does this treatment work better than the standard, the traditional treatment. So, you may have to pay a lot of attention to your pacing, because you can leave people in the dust explaining why something new could be better than what they might have already, and they may feel very wedded to a treatment that a doctor has recommended. So you might have to unseat, or create, at least create friendly curiosity about something that is brand new and probably also pre market, maybe not available yet.

Spencer Brooks 28:54

Yeah, that does strike me as a very difficult challenge, and I appreciate you sharing some insights into that. There’s a specific audience that I wanted to ask you about, Betsy, which you have mentioned a few times in our conversation already, and that’s caregivers. All right. I know that is one of the many audiences that nonprofits in the healthcare space need to be speaking to our caregivers. So, do you have any advice or tips on how communicators can address and hopefully alleviate the concerns of caregivers through their content?

Betsy O’Brien 29:35

Well, I think the first bit of advice in that regard is try to remember, as you are working on all your content, particularly if you do not have the time or resources to create a an entire hub on your website that is devoted to caregivers. If you can’t do that, at least keep in mind that caregivers the positive involvement of a caregiver can transform health outcomes. There’s a lot of research to show this. At the same time, I guess we’re going back to compassion, now. Many, many caregivers feel a lot of inner conflict. They’ve had a front row seat, perhaps, to all of these doctors visits, and maybe they’ve done a lot more reading than the individual they’re caring for. And they may be very, very afraid of the future, but they want to feel optimistic, but they’re not sure how. So you need to begin with what their challenges are, and not to mention that the the default that they are tired, because many of them are working part time or full time, and this becomes another part time, almost full time job for them. And how can they maintain their own health? The rates of depression, for example, among caregivers for any illness, but especially mental illness, are very high, I don’t have a recent stat, but it’s shocking, because this is a tough job. So how can you provide trusted information that supports hope without overstating the odds that someone will get well, someone will survive. Someone will thrive again. turnkey balance, right? Very similar to what we were talking about before. But if you can do that well, making sure that a caregiver feels seen and respected and understood as a part of the care team, because they are frequently sidelined and you never want to do that. Devoting the proper amount of time to thinking that way will help you a lot. In fact, a devoted portal is a good idea, because others working in your area of healthcare might not have done that. They might not have created a lot of caregiver content or brought it together in one place so that it’s easy to find. So why not? It’s not that hard.

Spencer Brooks 32:10

Yeah, I love that. I love that idea. And that is one of those ways that not only can you better serve those people, which is usually at the heart of the mission, right? If you’re improving health outcomes for specific disease or disorder, mental health or whatever. Then, then addressing caregivers is a huge part of that. And then also as well, you know, having that dedicated space for the content is also getting you out of that, the competition for attention, which sometimes happens, right?

Betsy O’Brien 32:41

Oh, for sure, yeah.

Spencer Brooks 32:42

And so I think that’s a fantastic idea. Betsy, I wanted to ask you about another topic that is kind of been on my mind lately, and that’s about measuring the impact of content. And I know that with nonprofits, sometimes impact is notoriously difficult to measure, because oftentimes it can be intangible or maybe distant from content. So what in your experience have you used you know, could be metrics or measures or just criteria to assess the impact of content. It could be stuff that you’ve used, or just that you’ve observed, that other organizations have used to say, maybe these are KPIs, metrics that we use to say this content has been successful, or it’s not been successful.

Betsy O’Brien 33:39

Sure. Well, what’s really interesting is that I, despite what I may have seen, you know, said or suggested, I do believe in data. It’s very important again, that pages rank also that we are specific, that every client, I ask every client in intake interviews, what level of reading do you aim for? Some of them are not sure, or they feel like they have to reevaluate that. I had a client come to me recently and say, for the longest time, we were aiming for eighth grade. Now it’s fifth, and so I had to rethink the way I was structuring the content that I wrote for them, so knowing your audience in that way, what, what reading level, vocabulary are they going to be very, very comfortable with. And I do think that you have to conduct your own limited, focused research. And my favorite way to suggest that is that almost every nonprofit has a small council that consists of patients and caregivers, for example or leading providers. Twice a year, can you put together some simple focus groups? Can you do it at your annual convention for example? Get volunteers to sit down and read a few new web pages and then ask them five questions about the clarity of the content. Was it understandable? Was it fair? Did it inspire trust? And then let them comment. I think the KPIs would be totally per the situation, you might be wanting to move the needle from here to there in a particular subject area, but that’s what I would do, simple, simple, simple research that gives you some data, but also some qualitative feedback. Almost every nonprofit has a wonderful board too, of SMEs and doctors who, most of them are pretty happy to weigh in, even if you are not ghost writing for them, maybe even if the content is not under their byline. A lot of them will help with that or point to someone who can.

Spencer Brooks 35:55

Yeah, I love that you have this focus on first of all simplicity and then also actually getting some interesting, qualitive data and feedback on what is and isn’t working. Because I think, you know, I would imagine, the problem for most folks isn’t that they don’t have enough data, it’s that they probably have too much and they’re not sure what to focus on. And it’s also, I think, you know, there’s in concert with the idea that generally, the stuff that’s easiest to track is also going to get more focus. And that may not always be the most important measure of how well you’re doing is the easy stuff. When I think of easy stuff, I’m thinking of things of things like, how long did someone spend reading this? That’s a useful piece of data, right? That is useful, like the number of people that spent, you know, how many people read this? How long did they read it? All of that, you know, without question, is interesting and useful, but it may or may not be the best measure or the most actionable that you can get. So I like the idea of keeping it simple, and I think even related to that, just as a side note, just asking yourself, you know, if nothing else changed about the way that we produced our content, or, you know, did anything, you know, if everything else did the same, what’s the one change that we could make that would make the biggest difference as a discipline of focus, and then narrowing that down to say, then,  how are we going to track that? Then that, you know, instead of choosing from a menu, like kind of a buffet menu of which stats are already available, that I can get at it, I think it forces you to think critically about, where do we need to be making a change, and then, how would we track that? And then you might find that you could have that data, but you may actually not have it, and the only way to get it is to maybe do a little bit more work than you might want to do, which is, you know, you could go out and have focus groups or whatever, but then you at least know that if I’m going to go and do the work to get that data, I know that this effort is worth it, because if I can use it to help change this one thing that’s the most important, it will have the biggest impact. Then you know, you’re spending your time, on something that has a lot of leverage behind it, as opposed to just looking at a, you know, that buffet menu and saying, well, these seem to correlate most closely with what I think would be important. And then, you know, then it gets lost in the whirlwinds, right?

Betsy O’Brien 38:47

You can, you can tell yourself anything about data. Well and, you know, I think it’s important to remember that all of us, all of us, no matter how much we read or what we’re involved with, live in some sort of a mental silo. One of the most intriguing experiences I ever had was attending an FDA listening session. So this was something that the folks at the FDA had organized so that they could take back qualitative insights to drug developers, and so you had a room filled with people who had come in as folks with lived experience, in this case, mental health. Yes, I take your drug. Yes, it has changed my life. And let me tell you the rest of the story. And it was really fascinating to watch the professionals, the medical and research professionals in the room, you know, the nods and every now and then you would just see the light come on for someone. And it was very, very illuminating for me too, because I am a lot closer to the FDA side of this story than I am to a whole room full of people who are living with side effects of drugs, say. So gosh, if the FDA can do it, so can we. Again, this is not something that has to be done every month or every quarter even, but I think it’s worth the time. I think it’s worth the effort, for sure. And I also think it gives you a qualitative story to tell your C level management along with those KPIs.

Spencer Brooks 40:29

Yeah, I love the focus on the qualitative data, specifically and feedback, because, yeah, I think that is so much closer to the heart of many nonprofit missions is essentially like qualitative improvement accompanied by ideally quantitative improvement as well. And so I think that you know that difference between those types of data and feedback and combining them together into one unified story is quite helpful. That’s I really appreciate that insight. Betsy, I had another question for you. In fact, I’ve had tons of questions for you! This is a question that I’ve asked you before, because it’s a question I ask every guest, and I’m curious to see if your answers have changed or evolved since the first interview that we did, but I’m curious, what are two or three resources that you regularly use to keep up on news and trends in your work?

Betsy O’Brien 41:29

Oh, gosh. Well, it’s interesting too, because I think at the first point when we spoke, I might have been in healthcare more broadly, and since then, I’ve really honed in on mental health. My favorite source in the mental health space is Mindsite News Daily. It’s a Monday through Friday news digest that could not be better for people like me who want to stay ahead of trends and read about new research and points of view in mental health care. I couldn’t live without the Washington Post’s daily reporting on health and public policy, because almost every nonprofit I work for is also in advocacy and I need to understand what’s happening there and in funding in legislative models. I love Medscape’s e newsletter, and I also like Scientific American they are really doing a wonderful job of following healthcare trends and giving news that is multi dimensional. So those are, those are some of the things that I read, The New York Times, of course, is beyond reproach as well. The newspapers and the media that were once local have become national in reporting healthcare news, and I appreciate that, because, again, it’s complex. It takes a lot of resources, but it’s worth working for true understanding.

Spencer Brooks 42:58

Yeah. Well, thank you, Betsy. I appreciate you sharing those resources. And you know, I say this every time, but I’ll make sure that they get in the show notes for people, so that if you want to check those out, can click through the show notes and they’ll be right there for you. And Betsy, I only have one more question for you today, which is, how can listeners get in touch with you if they’d like to learn more about your work?

Betsy O’Brien 43:21

Oh, very easy. Just drop by betsyobrien.com, which I think will probably be in the show notes. That’s where you will see my explanation of the work that I do, my point of view. Quick look at some of my clients, and I’d be happy to speak with any organization that would need, or like to have support in this area.

Spencer Brooks 43:44

Absolutely, I will make sure that that link is in the show notes, like you said, Betsy. And for listeners, that wraps up our show for today. And so if you like this episode, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. And I know I mentioned it a lot, but it really is one of the most helpful ways that you can make sure that other people listen to the show. You know, it takes, usually multiple hours to put a single episode together, and it probably takes about five seconds to to leave a five star rating. So it would be really appreciate it if, if you have the time and space to do that in your busy schedule, the show is also a part of the thought leadership of Brooks digital. We help nonprofits in the healthcare space transform their website into an intuitive resource that creates measurable impact. So, if you like this podcast, you can check out our website at Brooks dot digital. There you can find more of our insights and learn about our work, as well as sign up for our newsletter, where you can get notified about new podcast episodes, just like this one. And with all that said, Betsy, I really appreciate you coming on the show again for the second time. Thanks for being here.

Betsy O’Brien 44:59

Thank. You Spencer, thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening to health nonprofit digital marketing. If you liked this episode, leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform, and don’t forget to check out the Brooks digital website at www.Brooks.digital where you can find other resources like this podcast, learn how we help nonprofits like yours, and get in touch with our team. See in the next episode.

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