Dr. Nancy Snyderman and Dr. Barry Sears featured at M2W®-HC™…
The Conference for Marketing Healthcare to Women

Nation’s top medical educators to address annual marketing forum
American women are “gatekeepers” of $500 billion in healthcare spending

 

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 23, 2009 — Two of America’s best-known medical educators will address a who’s who of top-level brand marketers here at M2W®-HC™…The Conference for Marketing Healthcare to Women, November 5-6, 2009 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

With women’s healthcare spending estimated at $500 billion – roughly 90% of total U.S. expenditures – experts say it’s crucial for marketers to make a better connection with today’s savvy and sophisticated female consumer.

Dr. Nancy Snyderman, chief medical editor at NBC News, will open the conference with a keynote address on the importance of effectively communicating about health and wellness with the female consumer.

“As the primary healthcare decision makers for both themselves and those around them, women are a critical audience for marketers in this growing industry,” said Dr. Snyderman. “With healthcare reform at the center of media attention, now more than ever consumers are looking for information on health and wellness. The key thing for marketers to keep in mind is that women make 87 percent of the healthcare decisions for their families.”

One of the nation’s leading medical educators, Dr. Snyderman will also share her valuable insights on how to help women decipher the abundance of information available to them.

Closing this dynamic two-day program is Dr. Barry Sears, chairman of MedWell Foods and bestselling author of The Zone. According to Dr. Sears, marketers must understand that women are not only the “gatekeepers” of health in the family – they also view family health as a long-term process.

“Healthcare is complex and requires deciding on a variety of competing potential solutions,” Dr. Sears said. “Women have more patience than men in wading through these complexities. Furthermore, they inherently know that all health care ultimately starts with the diet.”

Dr. Sears said the healthcare industry often offers simple and quick solutions – i.e., pharmaceuticals – for complex problems, but they should also take other approaches, for example joining up with food companies to co-market convenient healthy foods with in-package coupons that can be applied to purchases of their drugs.

“Marketers should be thinking of developing a lifetime customer,” Dr Sears added.

M2W®-HC™…The Conference for Marketing Healthcare to Women is the premier marketing conference focused on the powerful, female healthcare consumer segment. This top-tier, B2B event is designed for senior-level brand and agency healthcare marketers and will showcase the best thinking, newest research and case studies on the female health and wellness consumer, enabling these key healthcare brand marketers to effectively connect and build business with this all-important target.

“Women are becoming more knowledgeable healthcare consumers,” said Nan McCann, President of PME Enterprises, LLC, producers of M2W®-HC™. “The Internet in particular has given them the power and the confidence to make informed decisions for themselves and their families, and that’s having a ripple effect from the corner pharmacy to the world’s largest pharmaceutical manufacturers.”

Associate Sponsors of M2W®-HC™ are Aetna, Draftfcb, Ketchum, KickSkirt, LifeScript.com, M2W® E-ssentials, Paramount Market Publishing, Pink Tank, Publicis and Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness; Hospitality Sponsors are The Hunter Miller Group, NBC Universal and WomanWise; Affiliate Sponsors are the National Woman’s Health Resource Center, WomenHeart, Look Good – Feel Better, Go Red for Women and The Center for Medicine in the Public Interest; Imc2 Health & Wellness is a Workshop Sponsor; Pharmacy Health Network, Women’s HealthCARE Television Network and Zeno Group are Showcase Sponsors; SNiPPiES is the Video Journalism Resource.