It’s time to start listening: Tia's first advertising campaign
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It’s time to start listening: Tia's first advertising campaign

Tia debuts "Healthcare that Hears You" ads featuring real members

By Tia

3 min read

What does “healthcare that hears you” look and, more importantly, feel like?

We started by asking you (our members) that exact question. And then we listened to your stories. The result: this week, Tia launched its first major advertising campaign entitled Finally, Healthcare That Hears You. Through a series of darkly funny videos and provocative billboards, we set out to highlight the absurdity of an experience most women know all too well: being dismissed and ignored by traditional healthcare.

We need to talk about medical gaslighting.

It seems simple enough – listening to women and believing them when it comes to their observations or concerns about their own body. And yet medical gaslighting is a well-documented phenomenon with serious consequences. The term refers to the way that traditional healthcare, primarily doctors, dismiss and downplay women’s health concerns. Studies show that women are more likely to be misdiagnosed than men in a variety of situations. Women face longer waits to be diagnosed with cancer and heart disease, are treated less aggressively for traumatic brain injury, and are less likely to be offered pain medications. One contributing factor is that scientists know far less about women’s bodies than men’s bodies; in fact, women weren’t required to be part of clinical trials until 1993. 1993! These statistics become even starker for LBGTQIA folks and women of color. This bias in medicine leaves many women to suffer in silence and for critical care to fall through the cracks.

Listening to women is where we started.

Listening to women is one of Tia’s founding beliefs. And since launching in 2017, we’ve continually heard stories from our members about how traditional healthcare wasn’t delivering what they needed.

In June we put out a call for members to tell us their stories about medical gaslighting specifically – and received an overload of responses. It felt like everyone had experienced this in one form or another. We invited a handful of those members to be part of the campaign, ultimately featuring them in still photography on billboards and digital ads. The final imagery is authentic and powerful, because it highlights real women: their bodies, voices, and stories. No models, no airbrushing.

This is just the beginning of a dialogue about how to change healthcare.

Ultimately, this is bigger than an advertising campaign, because women right now still need to fight for the right to choose what’s best for their bodies and health.

Tia is aiming to drive systemic change in the healthcare industry, encouraging women to call out medical gaslighting and providers to listen. In a post-Roe America, where women’s healthcare is under attack like never before, this simple commitment is more important than ever. This is just the beginning of a dialogue around how to evolve our healthcare system to better meet the needs of all women. What should we tackle next?

It’s time women were heard, not just seen, by medicine