Believe My Pain

My Role

For Advil's Pain Equity Project, I designed the digital hub that hosts stories from Black people's experiences in healthcare and resources to combat inequity.

Skills Involved: Creative Concepting, IA, Wireframing, UI, Prototyping, User Testing
‍Launch Date: September 2023
Agency: VMLY&R
Press: MM+M | Essence | Fortune

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To achieve pain equity, we must start by listening to the Black community when they are in pain and believing their pain is real. To do that, we must end the systemic racial bias that has 50% of white medical trainees still believing the myth that Black people feel less pain and ultimately resulting in 3 in 4 Black patients believing there is bias in how their pain is diagnosed and treated.

‘Believe My Pain’ is the debut campaign for The Advil Pain Equity Project and it focuses on illuminating the issue of pain bias through the lens of real patient experiences.

The Process

Engaging in hard-to-swallow realities can be an uncomfortable ask, but by illuminating the problem, adding a unique textured style and mindful touchpoints, our team created an emotive microsite where content grows with the project initiative.

We introduced the experience with a Manifesto, a Roundtable Discussion with Black healthcare experts and Personal Stories narrating individual struggles with the healthcare system.

Bottom Line

Pain bias in healthcare harms Black people and the 'Believe My Pain' microsite lives as a witness to those experiences while giving tools to patients and doctors to address bias at the source.

As a Black woman, my own healthcare journey has not been the easiest and I resonate with our cast who was brave enough to have their stories go public. To Etisyai, Mark, Inaayah, Deidra, and Mark — I thank you.

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