What 40 Conversations About a Pandemic Taught Me About How Pharma Communicates

Published 11 August 2026

Author(s): Kishan Rees, M.D.

Why the industry must abandon its traditional top-down communications model and instead build trust through credible individuals, audience information habits and faster engagement in the peer-driven networks where health conversations now unfold.

We have been telling ourselves a story about pharma communications for the past 20 years. The story goes like this: Global sets the strategy. Local affiliates adapt it for market. Trade, and maybe mainstream, media carry it. Health care professionals (HCPs) receive it. Patients, when included at all, are downstream. The job is to manage the cascade with as much sophistication, integration and measurement as we can afford. The story has been refined, digitized and omnichannel-ized. Yet the fundamental dynamic remains.

It needs replacing.