By Nilufer Munur, Account Director, 90TEN Communications
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilufer-munur/
Towards the beginning of the summer of 2014, I was finalising my dissertation for my master’s degree and realised that I needed to think about what I wanted to do next. Having studied biology during my bachelor’s and then having done a year of research as part of my master’s degree at Royal Holloway, I decided I had pursued the academia and research path as far as was right for me and I wanted to take my career in a new direction. However, I still had a passion for science and did not know what other options were available to me. So, I started looking for jobs online that were associated with health, biology and science – that’s when I discovered the healthcare public relations or healthcare communications industry.
What is healthcare communications?
Healthcare communications is raising awareness of the products and activities of the pharmaceutical industry. Within healthcare communications, there are different types of work – corporate communications, data communications, patient advocacy, digital communications and more. Corporate communications involve creating a voice for the company or their leaders in the industry, for example creating LinkedIn content to raise a leader’s profile externally. Data communications focuses more on the communications around the medicine and creating content for key milestones such as Phase III clinical trial results. Patient advocacy communications is where we help to raise awareness for specific diseases and educate patients, the public, policy and key stakeholders.
When I started my first job in healthcare communications, I did not have any previous work experience in the industry, as I had just graduated from my master’s degree. However, it was my biology background that employers were interested in. I entered the industry as an Assistant Account Executive and was working with three different pharmaceutical clients. My main role was to support the team with developing the first draft of materials (e.g. social media posts, pitch emails to journalists, infographics), conducting research for new business proposals, supporting with filming projects, calling and liaising with journalists to get coverage in top-tier media, monitoring for media coverage and managing the administration across all of my accounts including development of agendas and notes for clients calls. I also realised that I was able to apply my scientific knowledge to new therapeutic areas and clinical studies to quickly get up to speed with the requirements and challenges of my clients. I have also discovered that the pharmaceutical industry is very highly regulated (especially in the UK) and requires proof of specific key messages or statistics by citing appropriate publications and medical studies. Learning how to cite and build a reference list at university has definitely been a huge advantage for this. My role was very diverse, and no day was ever the same - this made my job exciting.
7 years on, I’m now an Account Director at 90TEN, which is a global healthcare communications agency and we work with the top 10 pharmaceutical companies to design communications and educational programmes that drive meaningful and positive change for patients, based on our understanding of human behaviour. I’ve noticed how broad healthcare communications is and how it can provide you with plenty of opportunities to work on different projects for different clients as well as continuously expanding on your writing, presentation and creativity skills. But don’t get me wrong, healthcare communications can sometimes be a stressful job. I have to juggle working with and managing multiple clients, who have high expectations and sometimes tight deadlines. But, if you are organised, have a supportive team and have open communication with your clients, you can overcome the challenges and thrive in this career.
Is healthcare communications for you?
Working in an agency makes coming to work enjoyable because I’m friends with my colleagues and get given plenty of training and development opportunities to gain new skills and expand my existing experience. I am also supported in my development by having a line manager to help achieve my professional and personal goals. When I joined 90TEN, I was given a “buddy”. My buddy was at a similar level to me but has been at the company for a few months, and therefore could provide me with any advice or answer any silly questions I might have. This was a nice change because it can be daunting to join a new company especially if it’s a new job, so to have someone you can speak to freely was comforting.
Healthcare communications is such a large industry, yet it is often unknown as a graduate career pathway. For example, the majority of my colleagues happened to come across it by accident. So, if you’re thinking about what career you’d like to have, my advice would be not to restrict yourself based on what skills you might/might not have and think more outside of the box. Healthcare communications is so broad: it could involve journalism, corporate writing, filming, social media, project management etc. Do not think that you can't do the job because you do not have enough real-world or work experience; there are plenty of opportunities for all levels of experience and can expect continuous learning in this career path.
If you are interested in learning more about 90TEN and the work that we do, you can visit our website here: https://90ten.co.uk/. You can also find more information about the healthcare communications industry here: https://the-hca.org/. Lastly, if you have any other questions, I am happy for you to reach out to me directly via LinkedIn.