Mayo Clinic beefs up its outreach with new podcasts
ROCHESTER — On an early Friday morning, down in the basement level of the Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center, more than a dozen people are gathered in a conference room. They buzz around a set: White walls with blue panels, lights, a long wooden table, two chairs and two microphones. Crew members adjust the cameras, which will capture video from three different perspectives.
At the table is Cathy Wurzer, the longtime Minnesota Public Radio and Twin Cities Public Television host, and Dr. Victor E. Ortega, a Mayo Clinic pulmonologist who is one of two guests for that day's recording. The other guest, Louise Wain, professor of respiratory research at the University of Leicester, joined the conversation from England via video conferencing.
They are all gathered to record an episode of "Tomorrow's Cure," a general audience podcast created by Mayo Clinic and PRX. The conversational, 30-minute podcast centers around the future of medicine, with Wurzer leading the discussion between two subject experts — one from Mayo Clinic and one from another institution, usually.
Tomorrow's Cure is just one of 19 podcasts that Mayo Clinic and its publishing arm, Mayo Clinic Press, currently produce for professional and general audiences. Just last month, Mayo Clinic Press launched four new health and wellness podcasts for listeners interested in aging, children's health, nutrition and more.
"Podcasts (are) one of the largest growing mediums out there, so we knew that we needed to be here, and we knew that there was an opportunity to truly get in front of a large portion of the U.S., if not worldwide, via audio and podcasting," said Dan Harke, publisher of Mayo Clinic Press.
Producing these podcasts aligns with Mayo Clinic's goal of expanding the reach of its care through digital means, said Molly Biwer, chair of Mayo Clinic's brand and creative strategy division.
"It obviously helps to enhance our brand presence and educate diverse audiences and supporting our goal of expanding care through these innovative and accessible means," Biwer said. "For us, the more information that people have to make their health care decisions, the better."
While Mayo Clinic's educational outreach takes many forms — social media, videos, blog posts — podcasts have the opportunity to be more relatable and personal, Harke said.
"Podcasting and audio just really lend (themselves) to a more conversational, deeper conversation than you would get, for example, with a digital or even a video," Harke said. "That's what the audience wants; they want a conversation."
And the interest is there, according to Mayo Clinic — while Mayo did not share listenership data with the Post Bulletin, the organization conducted a podcast audience study in December 2023 to gauge interest.
"Seventy percent of the respondents ... expressed interest in engaging with Mayo Clinic in our podcast," Biwer said.
For Mayo Clinic Press, the process of deciding a podcast's focus — and, from there, selecting topics for each episode — comes from data and from health care provider feedback, Harke said.
Listen to Dan Harke: "Audio is different."
"A lot of the topics that you'll see published on Health Matters and (Mayo Clinic) On Nutrition are topics that our physicians and our experts are hearing in the clinic," Harke said.
While the formats for each of Mayo Clinic's new podcasts are similar, the "voice" of each one is different. For some podcasts, such as Tomorrow's Cure, Biwer said Mayo Clinic opted to hire a professional host.
"We were looking for a host to be able to facilitate the dialogue between not only our experts, but (also) outside experts," Biwer said of Tomorrow's Cure. "We really felt like she could help drive the conversation a little bit better."
For other shows, such as Mayo Clinic Kids, a medical professional is in the host's chair. This underlines the goal of having the audience relate to and connect with Mayo Clinic's experts, Harke said.
"We do have health care professionals that are really good communicators," he said. "I would say high-quality is always what we're going for, so a lot of our experts can do both."
For Dr. Geoff Johnson, who was a guest for the fourth episode of Tomorrow's Cure, talking about his work to a general audience requires some adjustments compared to when he's speaking with professional peers. Johnson, a Mayo Clinic nuclear medicine specialist and radiologist, and another guest spoke with Wurzer about the future of nuclear medicine — using radioactive materials to diagnose and treat conditions such as cancer.
"I think it was more important to me to communicate the enthusiasm and excitement for what we think we can do with this technology to help people, and let people connect with that emotionally, not just the story of how the molecule binds to the other molecule and the technical charts and graphs and data," said Johnson, who is also the chair of radiopharmaceutical therapy trials at the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Johnson said his experience on a Mayo Clinic podcast was rewarding.
"For others who are considering it, it's rewarding if you can potentially get the general population to be aware of these things that are coming," Johnson said, "these new opportunities to hopefully make the world a better place."
As the four new Mayo Clinic Press podcasts get underway, Harke said adding video components could come later — right now, Tomorrow's Cure is the only Mayo Clinic podcast that is available with video. Tomorrow's Cure, itself, is gearing up for a second season, with new episodes slated to air in January 2025.
