When someone lives with a health condition such as asthma, psoriasis, or bacterial infections, they’re not the only ones who are affected.
Their family members — parents, spouses, siblings, children, or other relatives — often step up to provide care at home.
Global biopharma company GSK recognized this patient-adjacent audience in its content and marketing program. It’s a big group. In the United States alone, an estimated 44.6 million family caregivers assist their family members, according to Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
That prompted GSK to create an initiative — Carerhood — to help caretakers find credible information and peer support. Its success led to its selection as the Best Content Marketing Program in Health Care for the Content Marketing Awards. And, for her work on the program, Debbie Hsu, then the global patient digital platform and content strategy lead, was recognized as a 2024 finalist for B2C Content Marketer of the Year. Please note that GSK recently ended the Carerhood program.
Caregivers deserve their own content
“The knowledge needed to care for their loved ones goes beyond just dispensing medication,” GSK explains in its awards application. “Carers must research on their own, combing through many different sources, to find credible information to help their loved ones manage their conditions.”
These caregivers sacrifice and face increased stress as they help their family members navigate confusing paths. Doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals are already overwhelmed and not always available to answer questions.
GSK created Carerhood to solve or at least help address that problem. The mobile-responsive platform connected carers to the right information and actionable advice from expert carer communities.
It personalized the experience, too. On the homepage, visitors were immediately met with a quiz to understand their caregiving style (and a sign-up for updates so GSK captures email addresses).
The quiz helped GSK understand the loved one’s conditions as well as the carer’s needs and capabilities. It then recommended relevant content and opened the door to its carer communities on social media, including Facebook (116,000 followers), Instagram (almost 1,800 followers), and YouTube (3,870 subscribers).
Much of the content available through Carerhood was derived from experts in caregiving — people who have helped family members through their health challenges.
Its Instagram page illustrates the array of available content, from posts about offerings on the Carerhood site to self-care tips and advice on specific illnesses, such as benign prostatic enlargement.
In an Instagram Reel published on International Epilepsy Day (no longer available), for example, a mom named Emma shares what it’s like caring for her son, Oscar, who was diagnosed with the disease when he was 6.
YouTube served as a home base for its videos, including ones featuring carer advocate Elizabeth Miller giving tips to help relieve caregiver stress.
The Carerhood team made the experiences easy to navigate. For example, a four-minute video providing stress-relief tips was broken into clearly labeled chapters in the description. It also linked to the speaker’s Instagram account so viewers could follow her and learn more about caregiving.
On the Carerhood website, a video library gave caregivers access to relevant videos as well as suggested related videos:
It also displayed the site’s tagging system on the homepage so people could easily select the topic they’re most interested in and discover relevant content.
Delivering healthy results
In the first year after launch, Carerhood attracted more than 50,000 website visits from 50 countries. Over half (25,000) completed the questionnaire and saw their personalized content. About nine months after beginning, GSK expanded the site to add more health conditions and collaborated further with expert carers to spotlight the vital role played by caregivers.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute