Keeping InSight – Listening to Learn, Learning to Act

Jack Shanagher: What are you hoping to achieve with this podcast and who are you trying to reach?

Dalila Masic: Our goal is to create a forum for meaningful conversations about how we can break down health disparities and improve healthcare in our nation. Each quarter, we will feature healthcare leaders who will share actionable insights on social determinants of health (SDOH). These are nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes – including housing, transportation, education, employment, access to nutritious food, language and literacy skills – and give rise to health disparities.

We hope that their insights will unlock a new depth of knowledge for our listeners and engage members of the healthcare community, including physicians, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and nurses, with new ideas and solutions. That’s why we integrated the concept of “insight” and “community” within the podcast title.

JS: Who will narrate, and who will guest star?

Amulya Tatachar: We are very excited to be the narrators of this podcast. Prior to our roles at Sanofi, we all worked as clinical pharmacists, and specifically cared for transplant recipients and people living with diabetes and atrial fibrillation who come from underserved communities that faced several health disparities.

Our podcast will feature experts who will share effective approaches and evidence-based interventions to address modifiable SDOH and improve patient outcomes.

JS: Why is Sanofi launching this now?

DM: The data is clear: patients who belong to underrepresented racial and ethnic populations confront more barriers to appropriate diagnosis, receive less optimal care, and experience worse adverse outcomes compared to white patients.

We want to empower our listeners to identify disparities and create solutions to close gaps in care and work towards attaining health equity: a state in which everyone has an equitable opportunity to live their healthiest lives.

JS: So, why a podcast?

DM: We understand that time with healthcare providers is limited, so we need to use new channels to educate and disseminate new information. We conducted a survey asking health care providers (HCPs) about their preferred communication channel, and we found that the majority listen to podcasts. In fact, podcasts are becoming increasingly popular with over 400 million podcast listeners globally. Podcasts also allow for authentic conversations, which we felt was valuable when discussing the topic of health inequities.

JS: Why was it important for Sanofi to lead this conversation?

AT: As a leading global pharmaceutical company, it is important for Sanofi to lead meaningful conversations to improve trust and therefore, create a more inclusive and equitable global healthcare industry.

During the pandemic, the General Medicines Medical Science Liaison group surveyed key opinion leaders and HCPs about the primary challenges they face, and the survey largely showed that providers are struggling to find efficient, effective, and innovative ways to address health inequities.

In parallel, Sanofi took initiative in response to George Floyd’s tragic death to accelerate and develop a more robust diversity, equity, and inclusion platform with an emphasis on equity to recognize and address barriers that impact underrepresented groups. In February 2023, Sanofi launched “A Million Conversations,” which aims to close the trust gap seen between marginalized communities and healthcare.

JS: Where can people listen in?

Sara Hammad: Listeners can tune in to “Keeping InSight” on several audio platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts, using the search term “Keeping InSight”! The landing page for the podcast is also available on Buzzsprout.

JS: Are there plans to expand in the future?

SH: The theme for Keeping InSight this year was to discuss the impact of health inequities and SDOH within the diabetes, cardiovascular and transplant communities, bring awareness to these issues and ways we can combat them. We hope to expand this podcast in the future to different themes and possibly as an educational resource for trainees/fellows to utilize in their everyday practice and learning. Our hope is to bridge the healthcare community by highlighting areas of interest that HCPs want to hear and learn more about, and to create a conversational environment to openly discuss these issues so that we can all learn from each other.

This year, we focused on the impacts of health inequities and social determinants of health and ways to combat them. But in the future, we hope to explore similar topics and really establish ourselves as an educational source for trainees and fellows to use. Our focus is bridging the educational gap in the healthcare community by learning from one another and using our platform to provide meaningful conversations and useful information to help HCPs succeed.

JS: Dax Shepard’s ArmChair Expert fans are called ArmChairies - what will your fan base go by?

AT: Great question! I’d like to think our fanbase would go by “InSighters” because I know they will always be keeping insight!

A special thank you to Sara, Dalila and Amulya for sitting down with us. Tune into the latest episodes here.