Commentary

Better Sex, Hot Earrings -- and DEI: Exploring 2024's Top Pharma Insider Columns

Joymode, a male sexual performance supplement profiled herelast February, brought joy to our readers -- judging by its becoming their most-read Pharma & Health Insider of 2024.

“We think of it as being Athletic Greens, but for your penis,” the brand’s co-founder Shane Webster told us about the product. By combining L-citrulline and arginine nitrate to boost nitric oxide production, Joymode enhances blood flow, reportedly resulting in better erections, we wrote.

As supplement brands like Joymode prepare for a possibly friendlier environment under the incoming Trump administration, though, we need to wonder what the environment will be like for, say, DEI initiatives like an FCB Health New York campaign for “Clinical Equality” that we also covered in February. It ended up as the seventh most-read story of the year.

Almost a year before this month’s Inauguration Day, our very first question to agency CCO Kathleen Nanda concerned what new challenges the years-old initiative was facing with “DEI initiatives under attack on many fronts.”

“The main challenge we face is not pushback against our message,” Nanda responded, “but trying to get the message out during an age when people are being bombarded with so many other global and political issues.

Turning from supplements and clinical DEI, we may well find bipartisan consensus in at least one healthcare arena: mental health.

“Mental health seems to be the only thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on,” Kieran Clarke, co-founder/CEO of Mental Health Television Network, told us back in March -- as our second most-read story of the year asked if viewers could “Change Your Head By Changing The Channel?

TV, in the form of a PBS documentary titled “Matter of Mind – My Parkinson’s,” also takes center stage in our fourth most-read column: an April rundown of activities surrounding World Parkinson’s Day -- and advancements in treating the neurological condition.

Squeezing in at #3 between the TV-related columns was “Thermal Earrings Promise Hot Fashion With Health Benefits,” a Q&A with a University of Washington doctoral student about her devotion to turning jewelry “into smart fashionable wearables for continuous health monitoring.”

Two other columns in the top 10 also featured startup products:

-       At no.5, a “StarTrek”-like device in development that would detect the earliest stages of cancer and other diseases when aimed at people -- not to mention the presence of guns and other weapons.

That article prompted a response from one of its many readers that “Cancer is not a joke, please leave it to scientists & medical professionals. Please leave your security and military play toys out of this.”

To which we will now reply: While we certainly understand concerns about militarizing this device, nobody at the company developing this is treating the saving lives from both cancer and gun shootings as a joke, and we stand behind our headline’s characterization of this product as a potential “breakthrough.”

-       At no. 9, a consumer medical device called the Widdleometer, already available in Australia, that measures male urine flow as an “early warning system” for potential prostate and bladder problems.

Another two of 2024’s top ten columns dealt with lifestyle promotions from Liquid I.V. and Nuun, which when taking into account that another Liquid I.V. story made yesterday's list (PUT LINK TO THAT STORY HERE) of the year’s top 10 pharma/health news stories, reaffirms how hot the hydration category has become.

-       At no. 6, “Liquid I.V. Takes On Hot Events,” is all about how the brand planned to mark “Hydration Season” with a presence at music festivals and Miami’s Formula 1 Race.

-       At no. 8, “Do Hydrated Humans Have More Fun?,” a Q&A with Nuun senior director, brand marketing Chris Brody focusing on the Nestlé brand’s “Unexpectercise” series of fitness events.

But let’s return to the political climate in relation to our tenth most-read column of the year, “Beyond The Slice Of Life,” a Q&A with Ipsos senior vice president of creative excellence Alexa Marshall about the FDA’s new “clear, conspicuous and neutral” rules for how pharma brands must state side effects in their commercials.

What seems clear from writing this column and an earlier one on the same subject is that, amid consternation over past comments from Trump HHS nominee RFK Jr. about putting an end to pharma TV advertising entirely, even relatively minor changes like the new rules typically take many, many years to be developed, vetted and put into effect.

Whether or not the new administration can undo all those checks and balances that result in mutually acceptable solutions -- and, yes, compromises -- to all concerned parties will be a key question on many fronts in the new year.

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