Pacira BioSciences wants women to lead the conversation surrounding managing their pain—even if it’s a little embarrassing. In mid-October, the biopharma hosted “The Future is Female” virtual panel discussing the usually hushed-toned topics of pelvis and sexual pain, intimacy after cancer and postpartum recovery.
Moderator Beth Battaglino, CEO of Healthy Women, an educational health website aimed at women 35 to 64 years, led an all-female panel of leaders in their fields to address these topics.
Erin Fitzpatrick, Pacira’s vice president of marketing, says the company partnered with Healthy Women as a way of getting this information out to women and not just healthcare providers. The goal was to spark more conversations about these topics in consumer media, which in turn will have more women talking to their HCPs.
“The more that they can cover these topics, and I think the more that it feels like these are everyday topics that should be talked about, hopefully gives women the comfort to say this isn't just me experiencing this,” she said.
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Pacira is driving viewers to the event's executive summary on WeAreWomensHealth.com. While the entire video isn’t available to watch, there will be smaller clips accessible for view at a later date.
The company plans to continue The Future is Female platform with more panels and social media work, along with clinicians and other outreach.
“It is the beginning of a longer road, but the whole point is if we can harness women's voices, we can change the course of healthcare and the way that the 'status quo' is delivered to women today. This is the first step to really changing the dialogue and the conversation,” Fitzpatrick said.
The event was unbranded, but one of the areas discussed relates to Pacira’s product offering—non-opioid painkiller Exparel. The drug has been on the market since 2012, but Fitzpatrick laments that it’s only just starting to be used in surgeries for women. From the “Recovering After Surgery” section, viewers can click through to Pacira’s Exparel site, which gives information on how the painkiller can be used to lessen recovery time from cesarean sections as well as breast and gynecological surgeries.