Interview with Dr. Dana Carpenter
It is time to present a Blast from the Past Medical Communications Revisited. As I mentioned last week, I decided to bring back some of the classic episodes during this summer of 2021. Many are my most popular episodes. And they are as inspiring and informative today as they were when I first posted them (in my humble opinion).
Today I am revisiting my conversation with Dr. Dana Carpenter. She joined us originally in Episode #61.
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Blast from the Past Medical Communications
It was an eye-opening interview introducing us to Medical Communications. Sometimes this term is used for any company that employs medical writers, such as a CME producer.
Be open to whatever comes your way and make the most of it. – Dr. Dana Carpenter
However, in this context, we’re talking about the firms that provide marketing and advertising services to pharmaceutical and medical device companies. They create ad copy for peer-reviewed medical journals and online publications, presentations for sales personnel, support for live events, and multimedia presentations for regional and national meetings.
Nonclinical Job With A Great Lifestyle
This job can be very attractive because it offers:
- a great lifestyle,
- infrequent travel demands,
- opportunities for advancement, and
- the possibility of working remotely from home.
There are hundreds of companies helping pharma companies with their marketing. And most of them employ medical directors in small teams dedicated to a particular drug or therapeutic class. And while most are located in large metro centers, working remotely is available at many of them.
Summary
Dr. Dana Carpenter provides excellent advice and insights in this blast from the past medical communications discussion. Since that interview three years ago, she has moved on to a new related job. But you can still connect with her on LinkedIn. And my plan is to bring Dana back for another visit to the podcast in the near future.
NOTE: Look below for a transcript of today's episode.
Links for Today's Episode:
- Dr. Dana Carpenter's LinkedIn Profile
- Why Medical Communications Is the Best Nonclinical Career – 061
- How to Shine as a Technical Medical Writer – 155
Download This Episode:
Right Click Here and “Save As” to download this podcast episode to your computer.
Podcast Editing & Production Services are provided by Oscar Hamilton
Why Medical Communications Is the Best Nonclinical Career - 207
Interview with Dr. Dana Carpenter
August 3, 2021
John: Let's welcome Dana to the show. Good morning, Dana.
Dana: Hi, John. Thanks for having me.
John: I'm so glad you could be here, because I had heard about you as I was preparing to go to
the SEAK Conference, and then I was there, and I listened to your lecture, and it was so
informative. And I've never interviewed somebody about medical communication, so I
thought this would be perfect.
Dana: Oh, great. I'm excited to share my industry with folks that are either thinking about it, or
completely unaware. Kind of open their eyes to what we do.
John: Yeah. I think there's a lot we can possibly get into, but we'll try, and shoot for about 30
minutes or so, and answer at least the big questions, and we'll go from there.
Dana: Okay.
John: All right. Well, let's see. We'll jump right in. But, first, we can start maybe with you
giving whatever amount of background you'd like to give about yourself, and how you
transitioned. Because I know you were practicing full-time. How you made that
transition, and why you transitioned from your clinical career.
Dana: Sure. So, I guess I would start back when I was ... before I even became a doctor, I was
16, and I said to my mom, "You know, I think I want to be a doctor." Which came out of
the blue, there was really ... my dad was a scientist, but ... actually, an engineer. So, it
just rocked my mom a little bit. Anyway, when ... so, we pursued that path. And
followed it through, obviously. And it's funny, as I look back at that time in my life, I
actually wrote term papers in my English class about Toxic Shock Syndrome and it
seemed I was destined to go into medicine, specifically OBGYN, and of course that's the
career I needed up pursuing.
I took my undergrad in Champaign in Illinois and then I went to medical school at Rush
in Chicago, and when I got to my third-year rotation, I was over the moon excited to see
what OBGYNs really do because I had no idea. I'm not really not sure what convinced
me to say I wanted to be a doctor specifically an OBGYN.
I was so inspired by what they did, but at the same time I was a little bit frightened by it
because it seemed to really consume their life. I thought, "I'm going to do this." It's the
career path I chose, but I'm not going to do it my whole life. I didn't have a plan, though
how I was going to get out. Back then, no one prepared you to get out, so I went to
residency, then I went to practice, as you said I practiced for the better part of 10 years.
It was great. I was in an all-women?s practice. All my practitioners, my NP, we had an
intern at OBGYN, all were women. It was by women for women. It was really fantastic.
Probably the thing I loved the most about practice and we did the full complement of
course of medical and surgical OBGYN. The thing I loved most was patient relationships.
I was missing something and maybe it was creativity. I'm not sure what, but I knew
based on what I felt like I was missing and the fact that it was a very all-consuming
career. Once my loans were paid off, I was out of there.
At that point, I went to ... I guess I went into health communications inadvertently. I
started I guess a consulting company when I moved to Atlanta from Chicago called Dr.
Dana Health. I helped start up as chief medical office, an EHR start-up, helping them get
off the ground.
I did a lot of speaking engagements for different philanthropies. I guess I authored some
things. I actually have a website of my own and a podcast of my own, "a Minute for
Mom" was one of the podcasts that I would do and just talk for a minute about some
pregnancy related topic. I think that's how I got ?discovered? if you will in the health
communications arena. Because I made my way to CDM through a random recruiter
who found me through a little bit of health communications that I had out there on the
Internet.
Once I came to the health communications medical marketing arena, I just never looked
back. In that kind of appearance CDM where I did now for nine years, I guess. Actually,
nine years tomorrow.
John: Awesome, that's awesome. I'm doing these interviews, I'm talking to physicians about
career change and burnout comes up a lot, and other reasons you know. I think one of
the things that struck me when you were talking was that and I can relate to this, when I
went to med school in residency, I had no idea what it meant to even interact with a
patient. I have never touched a patient. I've never been in healthcare. I had no one in
healthcare with me, so you can imagine five, six, seven years later I didn't really know it
was going to be like this, you know?
It wasn't really burnout it was just like disillusionment, disenchantment. You had the
other external factors and they were nice, shiny things out there besides medicine. It's
very interesting. Okay, you made it to CDM. Was that like an eye-opener? Did you have
a pretty good idea what to expect? What was it that attracted you to that job?
Dana: Let's see, that's a good question. I'll tell you what, it felt like home the minute I got here.
I walked into a department of just MDs, PharmDs and PhDs. I remember the first day I
interviewed with all of them and they were all so in love with their careers. They oozed
energy and excitement about this, which you just don't see in medicine. When I told my
partner that was leaving practice, they basically said, "You're my hero" with a big sigh.
So sad.
Even when I came here everyone just had nothing but passion for what they did and you
couldn't help. It was just infectious, you just couldn't help to exude that yourself. I think
it's that. Look, I'm only been at CDM, so I want to say the culture here at CDM that
makes it so great, but because I don't know any other agencies from the inside it's hard
to speak to them. Certainly, the individuals that I know that have gone to other agencies
say the same thing.
It's the people that keeps them there. It's the work that's exciting beyond what we
would do in practice.
John: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now, I know currently I think your official title is senior VP and
director of medical and scientific affairs, but I'm assuming you didn't step in as that.
What were they looking for? Someone is going to be listening and go, "Well, what am I
going to be doing if I go there? What would be the job I would actually be looking for if I
wanted to do what Dana has done?"
Dana: Absolutely. I came in as an associate medical director, a VP associate medical director.
When you come in that it's like the basement, entry-level position for a physician who
has practice experience. If you were to come straight out of either medical school or
residency, you might come in without the VP title because you may not have any kind of
practice, really tangible practice experience.
However, I had that and some communications experience, so I came in as a vice
president associate medical director, and I was really responsible for a couple of brands
in the anti-infective space and that was it. I was very much contained in my therapeutic
reach if you will. I was the medical expert on the team as a medical marketing and
advertising company. We run a kind of a Mad Men type agency, right? We've got
account people, copywriters, and art people, and medical people, and together we
make up a team.
We are the brain behind everything that we do here. We have to make sure it's
scientifically and medically accurate. That really was my job then, but as you can
imagine that was nine years ago. It was relatively basic. As time went on and titles grew,
I took on more brands. I expanded my therapeutic reach far beyond anti-infective. I
grew a women's health group here bringing in women's health business, which we
didn't have at the time. Took on direct reports, took on agency initiatives.
As you grow in this industry, you continue to do the same thing, right? You continue to
be the medical expert, but you do it for more and more brands in a much larger scale.
You begin to offer strategic direction to brands where initially you're just a medical
expert and then as you learn the business and understand the strategic thinking behind
the work we do, then you are able to help drive the direction that a brand is going to go.
John: Okay, so a couple more questions that are triggers. I take it like you said, the either
you're with or without the clinical experience after training basically that's all you need
is that, and a willingness to learn. You learn most of it on the job in terms of the other
side of that coin.
Dana: Absolutely. It's almost unfathomable to me how much I've learned here. So far beyond
medical school, residency, and even practice. Once you're in residency like you're just
focused on your specialty and here I have worked across so much different rare
diseases. A lot of brands that are primary care physicians like in the cardiovascular space
and the pulmonary space. The only thing I haven't touched is oncology I feel like
otherwise the breadth of my work has just really made me learn so much.
That's what so exciting about it. For example, when we have a new business pitch come
in, if it's for pulmonary arterial hypertension, and I'm the one's available to do the pitch I
have to learn to become that medical expert on pulmonary arterial hypertension even
though I'm an OBGYN. So, you do and it's so fun to learn, and then to share and teach.
Watch what we create out of that, but the growth is unbelievable.
John: Now, is there formal let?s say training when you come or is it more mentoring, or just
jumping in? How does that look?
Dana: It's a good question. There's all of that. At least the way we are set up and I hope other
agencies are set up where you have someone that's more senior to you that you meet
every week. They're responsible for helping make sure that you're understanding your
work and you're doing the work appropriately. Also, managing your career and
mentoring you, we have a formal Omni-Con health group university where we ... Oh my
gosh, we have so many classes that we can take, for example we can go to ... I'm trying
to remember what they call it.
It's like ad school, they call it. You can go for six weeks and learn just as yourself, and
outside of your medical role, and you can put on the hat of the account person or the
art person, and create an ad. Or you can go to your person presence class or a
PowerPoint specialty class. It's the amount of professional training that we have
available is great.
You do have to take advantage of it. It's easy to get sucked into the work and ignore that
sort of thing. Our managers try very hard to steer us in the right direction. It's so
valuable.
John: Yeah, I imagine you have to somehow weave that into the actual work that you're doing
day-to-day. You carve out the time. When you're talking about mentoring, when I was
working in hospital management, I learned a lot just from the person that was
supervising me. As you're reporting to the COO or CMO and it's like, "Okay, how do I do
this? You've done this before, I haven't." That works really well.
Dana: Absolutely.
John: I'm trying to get a sense of the size of CDM just for perspective. Are there other
physicians there, are there different teams, or is it one big team? How does that work?
Dana: Yeah, the way we're set up is, so our medical and scientific affairs department is MDs,
PharmDs, and PhDs. Right now, we only have two MDs. There was a time that we were
probably split more evenly, but we're down to two and then the rest are PhDs and
PharmDs at this point and time. We only have about 12 people right now, which is down
from when I came. That's just the way industry has gone because that was back in the
day of the blockbusters like the term "Viagra," which of course are now are off patents.
Brands are more from biotech companies with smaller budgets. We each do a little bit
more across different brands. We don't need quite as many medical directors, but again
we only two MDs right now. MDs bring an incredible value to the agency beyond what
PharmDs and PhDs can bring. Every specialty brings something really unique and their
perspective is super important, but MDs as you know the folks who have been in the
trenches and written the prescriptions, have seen the benefits for the patients or the
side effects.
We know how to talk to each other. We are the audience for whom we at CDM are
creating everything. It's so important to have MDs on staff. My department, like I said, is
about 12 people. We as a strategy group, our falls into a strategy group. There's a small
group of what we call "account planners." The medical and scientific affairs department,
we think of ourselves as the scientific storytellers if you will. Our job is to uncover
insights around what each VP and the opinion leaders think.
The account planners, they're more on the human insights as far as why do doctors do
what they do. Why do they prescribe what they prescribe and how can we change their
behavior? We have some digital strategists and together we are the strategy team. We
have a very large group of creative, which is made up of art and copy. Account, those
are the people who run the whole business.
Altogether right now, CDM is about 300 people I believe and that's just CDM New York.
That doesn't include all the CDMs around the world.
John: Okay, that helps put some perspective on it. One of the things that was a little bit fuzzy
for me before and I learned a little bit at the meeting, but what is the actual end
product? Because you had some slides that show here's what we're actually producing.
I'm thinking as a physician, "Well, you create some kind of advertisement or maybe a
handout for the MSLs to go out." Whatever, but it's sounded much broader than that.
Dana: It is. You're right. At CDM, at the most basic level, the ads that you see in the journals
are absolutely what we create. However, that's just the tip of the iceberg. While it's fun
to create an ad, everything that we can do based off of an ad, so the image that you see
in the ad is kind of our basic context we call it. From there, we create an entire iPad
presentation that the reps bring to you, right? They swipe through and if you pay
attention next time you will see that creative concept is pulled through everything that's
happened in that presentation.
The games that you play at the conferences where you try to get to the top of the
leaderboard. The virtual reality experiences that you run into at the conferences. Any of
the speaker programs that you go to. All the materials that you receive in the mail from
big pharma or small biotech. That's what we create everything that's communicated to
physicians comes from an agency like us, whether it's digitally communicated. Even the
website, we create website for the drugs, as well. The mechanism of action videos.
It used to be a very segmented, a very paper-driven creative output. We still of course
have ads, but it's not remotely the end of what we do for sure.
John: All right, I can tell that you're kind of passionate and you like your job. I was going to ask
you, so what is it exactly that you particularly like about either working for this company
or in general in medical communication, and marketing?
Dana: The people are great. They're all super smart. They're all really passionate. They all want
to learn. Even though we're the medical experts on the brand, the copywriters still have
to understand the literature, understand the data because they have to help craft
messages for it. The art people have to display that information graphically. Everyone
has to understand it.
You have people who are really interested in science, so that's really great. I think it's
the team environment, it's kind of like a practice where it's very energetic. There's a lot
of comings and goings as opposed to when I was doing healthcare consulting. It's kind of
just me. This environment is fun and energetic. It's just the opportunity to learn, learn,
learn is really great and keeps our minds active, and hopefully keeps us young.
John: Do you feel like that there's a certain type of person, a certain type of physician
personality type that would be most suited for this, or do you feel like there's a place for
different types? The very introverted versus the extrovert, what do you think?
Dana: That's a super great question. Yeah, here's what I would say. Marketing and advertising,
by and large, typically attracts more of the extrovert, right? Their reason for that is we
are in front of clients often. We go to conferences with clients. We do a lot of presenting
ourselves, either here at the agency or to clients. Typically, these are people who enjoy
interacting with others and talking about clients. Yeah, that's what I would say there.
Now, the other aspects of medical education from promo MedEd where it's still
promotional, you're still creating. Speaker programs and slides, in fact, I'm working with
campaign leaders all specifically for pharmaceutical companies that have bought specific
drugs. There's no advertising. You're just talking about the facts about a drug. There's
really nothing super creative about it that requires a great deal of writing. Perhaps less
presenting, so perhaps it's a nice place to start because there's little bit less client
interaction, and a lot more in office work that you do.
If you're a little bit timid about being out in front of clients right away promo MedEd is
kind of a nice hybrid. The place where I feel maybe the more introverted physicians
would be most comfortable is our publication planning. Publication planners typically,
again we still work with big pharma and small biotechs, but we work with them to write
abstracts, to write posters that we see at conferences like the Peer Reviewed Journal
articles was a ton of writing there.
The other interesting aspect of that is you also strategize with your team on what data
you're going to publish. Where are you going to publish is? Which journal? What other
data? Who's going to be your lead author? There's a whole line of thinking and
strategizing in writing. A lot less presenting in public and with clients. If you're really
introverted, publication planning might be a good place for you. It's quite a kind of nice
range, frankly.
John: Let's see, I just want to make sure that's crystal clear.
Dana: Okay.
John: You were talking about within the realm of medical communication. I guess the
advertising is one end and you talked in maybe the medical component. Then the one
you just mentioned was, what was it?
Dana: Publication planning.
John: Publication planning. Someone looking at this might find all three of those within an
agency and kind of sort out which would make most sense. Maybe?
Dana: They won't be the same in agency, believe it or not. There are agencies that focus on
advertising like ours.
John: Okay.
Dana: They're agencies that focus on public planning and agencies that focus on promo
MedEd.
John: Okay, got it, got it. It's all under the umbrella, but they're separate kind of specialties.
Dana: They are. I will tell you that the lines are starting to blur a little bit. We typically in a
marketing and advertising work with the marketing clients at pharmaceutical
companies. Promo MedEd agencies more interact with medical affairs and a little bit of
marketing. Publication planning is straight up medical affairs. The lines are starting to
blur a little bit in the industry, the pharmaceutical industry is looking for a little bit more
of the blended model like you said.
There are clients for whom we do some promotional, typical promotional MedEd work
that would normally fall into the advertising bucket. It's still something that we can do.
It's hasn't typically been in our purview. Writing, serving as a speaker for programs in
the evening, that sort of thing typically is a form of MedEd. We do that too and
sometimes they just ask for that. Sometimes you will find both within one agency.
John: Are there headhunters or recruiters out there that could help a physician sort through
this? I'm interested medical communication, but I'm more in this bucket versus another.
Dana: There are and shame on me for not figuring out how to find them before our call.
John: That's all right, as long as we know they're out there we can find them.
Dana: I'll tell you if you have anything on your LinkedIn that indicates in any way an interest in
health communications or any health communications experience, they will find you.
They're really helpful. I know they're industries where sometimes recruiter calls seem to
be overwhelming, but these recruiters are so specialized in what they do. They know
how to find the right people. Absolutely, I would go out there and look for the recruiters
in this industry, yes.
John: Now, can you talk a little bit ... That's helpful, thank you. Talk a little bit about the
lifestyle for your particular world there in advertising in terms of the time at work and
working from home, or not, and how much travels involved, things like that.
Dana: Sure. Working as a medical director, basically we're 9 to 5-ish I would say. What makes
us different is if you're working on a new business pitch. We're trying to win business
and there's like a two to four-week period where you're like really intense and in the
trenches, and really trying to knock out an amazing presentation in a very short amount
of time. You're going to probably work longer hours and perhaps over a weekend.
You might even travel. My first pitch, we traveled to Berlin, which is of course took extra
days over a weekend, but it was fun. The only other time you might work a lot of extra
hours is doing the drug launch. If a brand is coming to market and they get their FDA
approval, the day that they get their FDA approval is an exciting day here. It's something
we really celebrate, but then there is so much work to churn out within ... There's a very
specific timeline within X amount of hours and X amount of days, and X amount of
weeks. All of the things that have to be generated from places like that.
In that instance, you might work more, as well, but by and large, first of all there's no
call. There's no phone calls with agents. No answering service on the other line at 2:00
in the morning. Even all that aside, we really do work roughly 9 to 5, maybe 8 to 6.
There's a good work-life balance. I will tell you a fair number of people work remotely. I
have a handful of people who work from home a couple days a week. We have some
people who are always remote that live in Atlanta. We're in New York, they're in
Atlanta, or in LA. We make it work. It?s definitely a possibility to not have to come to an
office every day.
John: Sounds like there's at least a little flexibility. Maybe not the thing where mom wants to
stay at home and watch her two kids while she's working.
Dana: That would be hard.
John: That could be rough. For those who want a little flexibility and don't necessarily want to
commute an hour or two every single day, it sounds like it'll be very helpful. I guess
normally I ask two other questions, but I'm going to kind of lump them together. I'll just
say that if someone were interested in this aside from getting their name and some
keywords on their LinkedIn. Number one, what would be a couple of steps they should
take and on the flip side, what could be a really stupid thing they shouldn't do?
Dana: Good questions. I would say if you were not already communicating even if it's
something like tweeting, right? If your name is not out there, if you're not doing
podcasts, or vodcasts, don't have a YouTube channel you don't have to go that far, but if
you're not already communicating get out there and start communicating. Because
that's how people find you. Even if you're not great at it, you don't have to be polished,
but you just have to show that you have an interest in communicating, and your world
will open up. That's the first thing.
What wouldn't I do?
John: Or mistakes you think others make where they were trying to get with your company or
someone else, and it's like they shouldn't have done that, or said that.
Dana: That's a good question. I guess I would say it was just related to what I just said is don't
be off the grid. Because, again, people need to find you. The other thing is negative talk
in your head is so easy to let lend out, right? Because you're like, "I'm just a doctor. I
touch patients. I don't know what other skills I have." It's easy for that voice to take
over. I think the biggest mistake that we can make is to let that voice lend. We really
have to shut that down and translate our ability to talk to patients and to colleagues,
and to write into this industry.
There are ways to creatively translate what you might think is ordinary. For example,
maybe you wrote an article for your local newspaper about I don't know, diabetes.
However, that could be translated into authored and endocrinology article for ... I just I
think we have to give ourselves credit for the things that we think are just what we of
course do because we're doctors and not limit ourselves to just the things that we think
that's all we can do because we're doctors.
John: Okay, okay. I want to follow-up on that then. I want to think of other examples. Back to
the communications side and demonstrating. If somebody is writing articles even
because you can publish articles on LinkedIn. You can publish articles on Medium. You
can go publish with KevinMD or whatever. Anything like that showing that you're going
to address something and have some skill at writing that is going to be helpful is what
I'm hearing.
Dana: Absolutely. Honestly, that's how the recruiters are going to find you.
John: Okay. As far as a blog goes, I mean, it's so easy to start a blog. I mean, if somebody has
an interest and just a little bit extra time because it does take time to get started, and if
it's clinical, fantastic. I mean, it doesn't matter what it's going to be, not necessarily
creative per se.
Dana: No, absolutely. Right, our job what's interesting is you can be as creative as you want,
but we are in charge designing the ads. When the creative team puts together a
concept, we of course weigh on the concept. They want to know from a medical
perspective is it accurate and does it make sense, and how would it resonate with
physicians, but we don't have to create it. If you're super creative and want to be a part
of the creative process, rock on. You don't have to be.
John: Awesome, that's great. Well, that has answered a lot of my questions here. Any other
last bits of advice you'll give to anyone's who's thinking about transitioning that we
haven't touched on already?
Dana: No, I think that's it. I think I would leave it with what I said before, which is don't think
you only know how to be a doctor. Your skills are very translatable and to be really
open. It can me, I imagine, it could be very daunting to come into this very corporate
world from particularly if you were in a small private practice. Somehow, I didn't find it
daunting and I think because I just rolled with the changes. I was just open to whatever
came my way. I would encourage people just to be open to whatever comes their way
and make the most of it.
John: All right. Awesome. Those are good words of advice. I'm sure this is going to generate
some questions. Is there a way one of my listeners could follow-up with you without
overwhelming you on LinkedIn, or some other way they can contact you?
Dana: Sure, sure, sure. I don't honestly know how to communicate how to find me on
LinkedIn. I don't know what I'm supposed to say except that I'm on LinkedIn.
John: You're on LinkedIn because, yeah, I can find a link. I can just put it in the show notes.
Dana: Okay, fantastic.
John: Have the ability to contact you without calling your cellphone or something.
Dana: Sure yeah. They can reach me at my work email is the easiest, which is
dcarpenter@cdmny.com. I have a Gmail account that is of course linked to my LinkedIn,
but I don't check it as readily. If somebody wants to find me, find at the CDM is the
easiest way to do.
John: I guess before we go, I do want to ask another question that I forgot about. You had
provided a handout, it was called "the MM&Ms Agency Solar System," which I'll
probably put a link in there because it's just gives an idea of the number and the scope
of companies who are doing this.
Any comment you want to make about that handout? It's a little overwhelming in some
ways.
Dana: It's very overwhelming, but yeah, I would definitely encourage you to share it, and
definitely encourage people to look at it. As I recall, it does indicate which agencies are
patient or pub-planning. You really can learn a lot if you take some time, see which
agencies do what, and then Google them. That would encourage your listeners to start
Googling around to these agencies and start with the Holding Company and see what
agencies fall under them. And what those agencies do and what interests them, and
what doesn't.
Yeah, I think that page has over 150 agencies somehow. It is definitely overwhelming.
It's a great resource and I have to admit, I did find out one of the people who work for
found it. Hats off to them because it's a great handout. I'm glad you're going to share it.
The only downside to the handout and it doesn't give you locations. Your listeners might
want to know that. Largely, the agencies are located in the northeast. Where we are
now, right in New York, has an abundance of them.
Sometimes in New Jersey and California have the next highest concentration and that's
largely because the pharmaceutical companies are. That's where the agencies are.
There's a splattering, again, there's over 150 agencies in this country and they are across
the nation. Much more concentrated in the Midwest go out in between California and
the Midwest. Again, like we talked about earlier, working remotely is a possibility. If you
happen to live in Colorado, I wouldn't rule out the possibility.
John: Okay, okay. I would think just looking these up, seeing what they do, start to look for
some keywords, what are they looking for? It's part of the research if you're really
thinking of changing a career.
Dana: Absolutely.
John: That is very useful. I was so glad that you had that for us at the talk at the SEAK meeting.
Dana: Yeah good.
John: All right, Dana. A lot of content, a lot of fantastic information, and obviously your
passion is coming through. There's very few ... When I interview people there's a few
careers that people are really happy and almost never leave. This sounds like this could
be potentially one of them. I want to put that on the top of my list.
All right, I guess with that I have no other questions. I guess I'll sign off now and say
goodbye.
Dana: Thanks for having me on, John. I really enjoyed it.
John: It's been my pleasure. Take care.
Dana: Thanks, you too.
Physician NonClinical Careers Podcast with John Jurica
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Why Medical Communications Is the Best Nonclinical Career - 207
Interview with Dr. Dana Carpenter
August 3, 2021
John: Let's welcome Dana to the show. Good morning, Dana.
Dana: Hi, John. Thanks for having me.
John: I'm so glad you could be here, because I had heard about you as I was preparing to go to
the SEAK Conference, and then I was there, and I listened to your lecture, and it was so
informative. And I've never interviewed somebody about medical communication, so I
thought this would be perfect.
Dana: Oh, great. I'm excited to share my industry with folks that are either thinking about it, or
completely unaware. Kind of open their eyes to what we do.
John: Yeah. I think there's a lot we can possibly get into, but we'll try, and shoot for about 30
minutes or so, and answer at least the big questions, and we'll go from there.
Dana: Okay.
John: All right. Well, let's see. We'll jump right in. But, first, we can start maybe with you
giving whatever amount of background you'd like to give about yourself, and how you
transitioned. Because I know you were practicing full-time. How you made that
transition, and why you transitioned from your clinical career.
Dana: Sure. So, I guess I would start back when I was ... before I even became a doctor, I was
16, and I said to my mom, "You know, I think I want to be a doctor." Which came out of
the blue, there was really ... my dad was a scientist, but ... actually, an engineer. So, it
just rocked my mom a little bit. Anyway, when ... so, we pursued that path. And
followed it through, obviously. And it's funny, as I look back at that time in my life, I
actually wrote term papers in my English class about Toxic Shock Syndrome and it
seemed I was destined to go into medicine, specifically OBGYN, and of course that's the
career I needed up pursuing.
I took my undergrad in Champaign in Illinois and then I went to medical school at Rush
in Chicago, and when I got to my third-year rotation, I was over the moon excited to see
what OBGYNs really do because I had no idea. I'm not really not sure what convinced
me to say I wanted to be a doctor specifically an OBGYN.
I was so inspired by what they did, but at the same time I was a little bit frightened by it
because it seemed to really consume their life. I thought, "I'm going to do this." It's the
career path I chose, but I'm not going to do it my whole life. I didn't have a plan, though
how I was going to get out. Back then, no one prepared you to get out, so I went to
residency, then I went to practice, as you said I practiced for the better part of 10 years.
It was great. I was in an all-women?s practice. All my practitioners, my NP, we had an
intern at OBGYN, all were women. It was by women for women. It was really fantastic.
Probably the thing I loved the most about practice and we did the full complement of
course of medical and surgical OBGYN. The thing I loved most was patient relationships.
I was missing something and maybe it was creativity. I'm not sure what, but I knew
based on what I felt like I was missing and the fact that it was a very all-consuming
career. Once my loans were paid off, I was out of there.
At that point, I went to ... I guess I went into health communications inadvertently. I
started I guess a consulting company when I moved to Atlanta from Chicago called Dr.
Dana Health. I helped start up as chief medical office, an EHR start-up, helping them get
off the ground.
I did a lot of speaking engagements for different philanthropies. I guess I authored some
things. I actually have a website of my own and a podcast of my own, "a Minute for
Mom" was one of the podcasts that I would do and just talk for a minute about some
pregnancy related topic. I think that's how I got ?discovered? if you will in the health
communications arena. Because I made my way to CDM through a random recruiter
who found me through a little bit of health communications that I had out there on the
Internet.
Once I came to the health communications medical marketing arena, I just never looked
back. In that kind of appearance CDM where I did now for nine years, I guess. Actually,
nine years tomorrow.
John: Awesome, that's awesome. I'm doing these interviews, I'm talking to physicians about
career change and burnout comes up a lot, and other reasons you know. I think one of
the things that struck me when you were talking was that and I can relate to this, when I
went to med school in residency, I had no idea what it meant to even interact with a
patient. I have never touched a patient. I've never been in healthcare. I had no one in
healthcare with me, so you can imagine five, six, seven years later I didn't really know it
was going to be like this, you know?
It wasn't really burnout it was just like disillusionment, disenchantment. You had the
other external factors and they were nice, shiny things out there besides medicine. It's
very interesting. Okay, you made it to CDM. Was that like an eye-opener? Did you have
a pretty good idea what to expect? What was it that attracted you to that job?
Dana: Let's see, that's a good question. I'll tell you what, it felt like home the minute I got here.
I walked into a department of just MDs, PharmDs and PhDs. I remember the first day I
interviewed with all of them and they were all so in love with their careers. They oozed
energy and excitement about this, which you just don't see in medicine. When I told my
partner that was leaving practice, they basically said, "You're my hero" with a big sigh.
So sad.
Even when I came here everyone just had nothing but passion for what they did and you
couldn't help. It was just infectious, you just couldn't help to exude that yourself. I think
it's that. Look, I'm only been at CDM, so I want to say the culture here at CDM that
makes it so great, but because I don't know any other agencies from the inside it's hard
to speak to them. Certainly, the individuals that I know that have gone to other agencies
say the same thing.
It's the people that keeps them there. It's the work that's exciting beyond what we
would do in practice.
John: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now, I know currently I think your official title is senior VP and
director of medical and scientific affairs, but I'm assuming you didn't step in as that.
What were they looking for? Someone is going to be listening and go, "Well, what am I
going to be doing if I go there? What would be the job I would actually be looking for if I
wanted to do what Dana has done?"
Dana: Absolutely. I came in as an associate medical director, a VP associate medical director.
When you come in that it's like the basement, entry-level position for a physician who
has practice experience. If you were to come straight out of either medical school or
residency, you might come in without the VP title because you may not have any kind of
practice, really tangible practice experience.
However, I had that and some communications experience, so I came in as a vice
president associate medical director, and I was really responsible for a couple of brands
in the anti-infective space and that was it. I was very much contained in my therapeutic
reach if you will. I was the medical expert on the team as a medical marketing and
advertising company. We run a kind of a Mad Men type agency, right? We've got
account people, copywriters, and art people, and medical people, and together we
make up a team.
We are the brain behind everything that we do here. We have to make sure it's
scientifically and medically accurate. That really was my job then, but as you can
imagine that was nine years ago. It was relatively basic. As time went on and titles grew,
I took on more brands. I expanded my therapeutic reach far beyond anti-infective. I
grew a women's health group here bringing in women's health business, which we
didn't have at the time. Took on direct reports, took on agency initiatives.
As you grow in this industry, you continue to do the same thing, right? You continue to
be the medical expert, but you do it for more and more brands in a much larger scale.
You begin to offer strategic direction to brands where initially you're just a medical
expert and then as you learn the business and understand the strategic thinking behind
the work we do, then you are able to help drive the direction that a brand is going to go.
John: Okay, so a couple more questions that are triggers. I take it like you said, the either
you're with or without the clinical experience after training basically that's all you need
is that, and a willingness to learn. You learn most of it on the job in terms of the other
side of that coin.
Dana: Absolutely. It's almost unfathomable to me how much I've learned here. So far beyond
medical school, residency, and even practice. Once you're in residency like you're just
focused on your specialty and here I have worked across so much different rare
diseases. A lot of brands that are primary care physicians like in the cardiovascular space
and the pulmonary space. The only thing I haven't touched is oncology I feel like
otherwise the breadth of my work has just really made me learn so much.
That's what so exciting about it. For example, when we have a new business pitch come
in, if it's for pulmonary arterial hypertension, and I'm the one's available to do the pitch I
have to learn to become that medical expert on pulmonary arterial hypertension even
though I'm an OBGYN. So, you do and it's so fun to learn, and then to share and teach.
Watch what we create out of that, but the growth is unbelievable.
John: Now, is there formal let?s say training when you come or is it more mentoring, or just
jumping in? How does that look?
Dana: It's a good question. There's all of that. At least the way we are set up and I hope other
agencies are set up where you have someone that's more senior to you that you meet
every week. They're responsible for helping make sure that you're understanding your
work and you're doing the work appropriately. Also, managing your career and
mentoring you, we have a formal Omni-Con health group university where we ... Oh my
gosh, we have so many classes that we can take, for example we can go to ... I'm trying
to remember what they call it.
It's like ad school, they call it. You can go for six weeks and learn just as yourself, and
outside of your medical role, and you can put on the hat of the account person or the
art person, and create an ad. Or you can go to your person presence class or a
PowerPoint specialty class. It's the amount of professional training that we have
available is great.
You do have to take advantage of it. It's easy to get sucked into the work and ignore that
sort of thing. Our managers try very hard to steer us in the right direction. It's so
valuable.
John: Yeah, I imagine you have to somehow weave that into the actual work that you're doing
day-to-day. You carve out the time. When you're talking about mentoring, when I was
working in hospital management, I learned a lot just from the person that was
supervising me. As you're reporting to the COO or CMO and it's like, "Okay, how do I do
this? You've done this before, I haven't." That works really well.
Dana: Absolutely.
John: I'm trying to get a sense of the size of CDM just for perspective. Are there other
physicians there, are there different teams, or is it one big team? How does that work?
Dana: Yeah, the way we're set up is, so our medical and scientific affairs department is MDs,
PharmDs, and PhDs. Right now, we only have two MDs. There was a time that we were
probably split more evenly, but we're down to two and then the rest are PhDs and
PharmDs at this point and time. We only have about 12 people right now, which is down
from when I came. That's just the way industry has gone because that was back in the
day of the blockbusters like the term "Viagra," which of course are now are off patents.
Brands are more from biotech companies with smaller budgets. We each do a little bit
more across different brands. We don't need quite as many medical directors, but again
we only two MDs right now. MDs bring an incredible value to the agency beyond what
PharmDs and PhDs can bring. Every specialty brings something really unique and their
perspective is super important, but MDs as you know the folks who have been in the
trenches and written the prescriptions, have seen the benefits for the patients or the
side effects.
We know how to talk to each other. We are the audience for whom we at CDM are
creating everything. It's so important to have MDs on staff. My department, like I said, is
about 12 people. We as a strategy group, our falls into a strategy group. There's a small
group of what we call "account planners." The medical and scientific affairs department,
we think of ourselves as the scientific storytellers if you will. Our job is to uncover
insights around what each VP and the opinion leaders think.
The account planners, they're more on the human insights as far as why do doctors do
what they do. Why do they prescribe what they prescribe and how can we change their
behavior? We have some digital strategists and together we are the strategy team. We
have a very large group of creative, which is made up of art and copy. Account, those
are the people who run the whole business.
Altogether right now, CDM is about 300 people I believe and that's just CDM New York.
That doesn't include all the CDMs around the world.
John: Okay, that helps put some perspective on it. One of the things that was a little bit fuzzy
for me before and I learned a little bit at the meeting, but what is the actual end
product? Because you had some slides that show here's what we're actually producing.
I'm thinking as a physician, "Well, you create some kind of advertisement or maybe a
handout for the MSLs to go out." Whatever, but it's sounded much broader than that.
Dana: It is. You're right. At CDM, at the most basic level, the ads that you see in the journals
are absolutely what we create. However, that's just the tip of the iceberg. While it's fun
to create an ad, everything that we can do based off of an ad, so the image that you see
in the ad is kind of our basic context we call it. From there, we create an entire iPad
presentation that the reps bring to you, right? They swipe through and if you pay
attention next time you will see that creative concept is pulled through everything that's
happened in that presentation.
The games that you play at the conferences where you try to get to the top of the
leaderboard. The virtual reality experiences that you run into at the conferences. Any of
the speaker programs that you go to. All the materials that you receive in the mail from
big pharma or small biotech. That's what we create everything that's communicated to
physicians comes from an agency like us, whether it's digitally communicated. Even the
website, we create website for the drugs, as well. The mechanism of action videos.
It used to be a very segmented, a very paper-driven creative output. We still of course
have ads, but it's not remotely the end of what we do for sure.
John: All right, I can tell that you're kind of passionate and you like your job. I was going to ask
you, so what is it exactly that you particularly like about either working for this company
or in general in medical communication, and marketing?
Dana: The people are great. They're all super smart. They're all really passionate. They all want
to learn. Even though we're the medical experts on the brand, the copywriters still have
to understand the literature, understand the data because they have to help craft
messages for it. The art people have to display that information graphically. Everyone
has to understand it.
You have people who are really interested in science, so that's really great. I think it's
the team environment, it's kind of like a practice where it's very energetic. There's a lot
of comings and goings as opposed to when I was doing healthcare consulting. It's kind of
just me. This environment is fun and energetic. It's just the opportunity to learn, learn,
learn is really great and keeps our minds active, and hopefully keeps us young.
John: Do you feel like that there's a certain type of person, a certain type of physician
personality type that would be most suited for this, or do you feel like there's a place for
different types? The very introverted versus the extrovert, what do you think?
Dana: That's a super great question. Yeah, here's what I would say. Marketing and advertising,
by and large, typically attracts more of the extrovert, right? Their reason for that is we
are in front of clients often. We go to conferences with clients. We do a lot of presenting
ourselves, either here at the agency or to clients. Typically, these are people who enjoy
interacting with others and talking about clients. Yeah, that's what I would say there.
Now, the other aspects of medical education from promo MedEd where it's still
promotional, you're still creating. Speaker programs and slides, in fact, I'm working with
campaign leaders all specifically for pharmaceutical companies that have bought specific
drugs. There's no advertising. You're just talking about the facts about a drug. There's
really nothing super creative about it that requires a great deal of writing. Perhaps less
presenting, so perhaps it's a nice place to start because there's little bit less client
interaction, and a lot more in office work that you do.
If you're a little bit timid about being out in front of clients right away promo MedEd is
kind of a nice hybrid. The place where I feel maybe the more introverted physicians
would be most comfortable is our publication planning. Publication planners typically,
again we still work with big pharma and small biotechs, but we work with them to write
abstracts, to write posters that we see at conferences like the Peer Reviewed Journal
articles was a ton of writing there.
The other interesting aspect of that is you also strategize with your team on what data
you're going to publish. Where are you going to publish is? Which journal? What other
data? Who's going to be your lead author? There's a whole line of thinking and
strategizing in writing. A lot less presenting in public and with clients. If you're really
introverted, publication planning might be a good place for you. It's quite a kind of nice
range, frankly.
John: Let's see, I just want to make sure that's crystal clear.
Dana: Okay.
John: You were talking about within the realm of medical communication. I guess the
advertising is one end and you talked in maybe the medical component. Then the one
you just mentioned was, what was it?
Dana: Publication planning.
John: Publication planning. Someone looking at this might find all three of those within an
agency and kind of sort out which would make most sense. Maybe?
Dana: They won't be the same in agency, believe it or not. There are agencies that focus on
advertising like ours.
John: Okay.
Dana: They're agencies that focus on public planning and agencies that focus on promo
MedEd.
John: Okay, got it, got it. It's all under the umbrella, but they're separate kind of specialties.
Dana: They are. I will tell you that the lines are starting to blur a little bit. We typically in a
marketing and advertising work with the marketing clients at pharmaceutical
companies. Promo MedEd agencies more interact with medical affairs and a little bit of
marketing. Publication planning is straight up medical affairs. The lines are starting to
blur a little bit in the industry, the pharmaceutical industry is looking for a little bit more
of the blended model like you said.
There are clients for whom we do some promotional, typical promotional MedEd work
that would normally fall into the advertising bucket. It's still something that we can do.
It's hasn't typically been in our purview. Writing, serving as a speaker for programs in
the evening, that sort of thing typically is a form of MedEd. We do that too and
sometimes they just ask for that. Sometimes you will find both within one agency.
John: Are there headhunters or recruiters out there that could help a physician sort through
this? I'm interested medical communication, but I'm more in this bucket versus another.
Dana: There are and shame on me for not figuring out how to find them before our call.
John: That's all right, as long as we know they're out there we can find them.
Dana: I'll tell you if you have anything on your LinkedIn that indicates in any way an interest in
health communications or any health communications experience, they will find you.
They're really helpful. I know they're industries where sometimes recruiter calls seem to
be overwhelming, but these recruiters are so specialized in what they do. They know
how to find the right people. Absolutely, I would go out there and look for the recruiters
in this industry, yes.
John: Now, can you talk a little bit ... That's helpful, thank you. Talk a little bit about the
lifestyle for your particular world there in advertising in terms of the time at work and
working from home, or not, and how much travels involved, things like that.
Dana: Sure. Working as a medical director, basically we're 9 to 5-ish I would say. What makes
us different is if you're working on a new business pitch. We're trying to win business
and there's like a two to four-week period where you're like really intense and in the
trenches, and really trying to knock out an amazing presentation in a very short amount
of time. You're going to probably work longer hours and perhaps over a weekend.
You might even travel. My first pitch, we traveled to Berlin, which is of course took extra
days over a weekend, but it was fun. The only other time you might work a lot of extra
hours is doing the drug launch. If a brand is coming to market and they get their FDA
approval, the day that they get their FDA approval is an exciting day here. It's something
we really celebrate, but then there is so much work to churn out within ... There's a very
specific timeline within X amount of hours and X amount of days, and X amount of
weeks. All of the things that have to be generated from places like that.
In that instance, you might work more, as well, but by and large, first of all there's no
call. There's no phone calls with agents. No answering service on the other line at 2:00
in the morning. Even all that aside, we really do work roughly 9 to 5, maybe 8 to 6.
There's a good work-life balance. I will tell you a fair number of people work remotely. I
have a handful of people who work from home a couple days a week. We have some
people who are always remote that live in Atlanta. We're in New York, they're in
Atlanta, or in LA. We make it work. It?s definitely a possibility to not have to come to an
office every day.
John: Sounds like there's at least a little flexibility. Maybe not the thing where mom wants to
stay at home and watch her two kids while she's working.
Dana: That would be hard.
John: That could be rough. For those who want a little flexibility and don't necessarily want to
commute an hour or two every single day, it sounds like it'll be very helpful. I guess
normally I ask two other questions, but I'm going to kind of lump them together. I'll just
say that if someone were interested in this aside from getting their name and some
keywords on their LinkedIn. Number one, what would be a couple of steps they should
take and on the flip side, what could be a really stupid thing they shouldn't do?
Dana: Good questions. I would say if you were not already communicating even if it's
something like tweeting, right? If your name is not out there, if you're not doing
podcasts, or vodcasts, don't have a YouTube channel you don't have to go that far, but if
you're not already communicating get out there and start communicating. Because
that's how people find you. Even if you're not great at it, you don't have to be polished,
but you just have to show that you have an interest in communicating, and your world
will open up. That's the first thing.
What wouldn't I do?
John: Or mistakes you think others make where they were trying to get with your company or
someone else, and it's like they shouldn't have done that, or said that.
Dana: That's a good question. I guess I would say it was just related to what I just said is don't
be off the grid. Because, again, people need to find you. The other thing is negative talk
in your head is so easy to let lend out, right? Because you're like, "I'm just a doctor. I
touch patients. I don't know what other skills I have." It's easy for that voice to take
over. I think the biggest mistake that we can make is to let that voice lend. We really
have to shut that down and translate our ability to talk to patients and to colleagues,
and to write into this industry.
There are ways to creatively translate what you might think is ordinary. For example,
maybe you wrote an article for your local newspaper about I don't know, diabetes.
However, that could be translated into authored and endocrinology article for ... I just I
think we have to give ourselves credit for the things that we think are just what we of
course do because we're doctors and not limit ourselves to just the things that we think
that's all we can do because we're doctors.
John: Okay, okay. I want to follow-up on that then. I want to think of other examples. Back to
the communications side and demonstrating. If somebody is writing articles even
because you can publish articles on LinkedIn. You can publish articles on Medium. You
can go publish with KevinMD or whatever. Anything like that showing that you're going
to address something and have some skill at writing that is going to be helpful is what
I'm hearing.
Dana: Absolutely. Honestly, that's how the recruiters are going to find you.
John: Okay. As far as a blog goes, I mean, it's so easy to start a blog. I mean, if somebody has
an interest and just a little bit extra time because it does take time to get started, and if
it's clinical, fantastic. I mean, it doesn't matter what it's going to be, not necessarily
creative per se.
Dana: No, absolutely. Right, our job what's interesting is you can be as creative as you want,
but we are in charge designing the ads. When the creative team puts together a
concept, we of course weigh on the concept. They want to know from a medical
perspective is it accurate and does it make sense, and how would it resonate with
physicians, but we don't have to create it. If you're super creative and want to be a part
of the creative process, rock on. You don't have to be.
John: Awesome, that's great. Well, that has answered a lot of my questions here. Any other
last bits of advice you'll give to anyone's who's thinking about transitioning that we
haven't touched on already?
Dana: No, I think that's it. I think I would leave it with what I said before, which is don't think
you only know how to be a doctor. Your skills are very translatable and to be really
open. It can me, I imagine, it could be very daunting to come into this very corporate
world from particularly if you were in a small private practice. Somehow, I didn't find it
daunting and I think because I just rolled with the changes. I was just open to whatever
came my way. I would encourage people just to be open to whatever comes their way
and make the most of it.
John: All right. Awesome. Those are good words of advice. I'm sure this is going to generate
some questions. Is there a way one of my listeners could follow-up with you without
overwhelming you on LinkedIn, or some other way they can contact you?
Dana: Sure, sure, sure. I don't honestly know how to communicate how to find me on
LinkedIn. I don't know what I'm supposed to say except that I'm on LinkedIn.
John: You're on LinkedIn because, yeah, I can find a link. I can just put it in the show notes.
Dana: Okay, fantastic.
John: Have the ability to contact you without calling your cellphone or something.
Dana: Sure yeah. They can reach me at my work email is the easiest, which is
dcarpenter@cdmny.com. I have a Gmail account that is of course linked to my LinkedIn,
but I don't check it as readily. If somebody wants to find me, find at the CDM is the
easiest way to do.
John: I guess before we go, I do want to ask another question that I forgot about. You had
provided a handout, it was called "the MM&Ms Agency Solar System," which I'll
probably put a link in there because it's just gives an idea of the number and the scope
of companies who are doing this.
Any comment you want to make about that handout? It's a little overwhelming in some
ways.
Dana: It's very overwhelming, but yeah, I would definitely encourage you to share it, and
definitely encourage people to look at it. As I recall, it does indicate which agencies are
patient or pub-planning. You really can learn a lot if you take some time, see which
agencies do what, and then Google them. That would encourage your listeners to start
Googling around to these agencies and start with the Holding Company and see what
agencies fall under them. And what those agencies do and what interests them, and
what doesn't.
Yeah, I think that page has over 150 agencies somehow. It is definitely overwhelming.
It's a great resource and I have to admit, I did find out one of the people who work for
found it. Hats off to them because it's a great handout. I'm glad you're going to share it.
The only downside to the handout and it doesn't give you locations. Your listeners might
want to know that. Largely, the agencies are located in the northeast. Where we are
now, right in New York, has an abundance of them.
Sometimes in New Jersey and California have the next highest concentration and that's
largely because the pharmaceutical companies are. That's where the agencies are.
There's a splattering, again, there's over 150 agencies in this country and they are across
the nation. Much more concentrated in the Midwest go out in between California and
the Midwest. Again, like we talked about earlier, working remotely is a possibility. If you
happen to live in Colorado, I wouldn't rule out the possibility.
John: Okay, okay. I would think just looking these up, seeing what they do, start to look for
some keywords, what are they looking for? It's part of the research if you're really
thinking of changing a career.
Dana: Absolutely.
John: That is very useful. I was so glad that you had that for us at the talk at the SEAK meeting.
Dana: Yeah good.
John: All right, Dana. A lot of content, a lot of fantastic information, and obviously your
passion is coming through. There's very few ... When I interview people there's a few
careers that people are really happy and almost never leave. This sounds like this could
be potentially one of them. I want to put that on the top of my list.
All right, I guess with that I have no other questions. I guess I'll sign off now and say
goodbye.
Dana: Thanks for having me on, John. I really enjoyed it.
John: It's been my pleasure. Take care.
Dana: Thanks, you too.
Physician NonClinical Careers Podcast with John Jurica
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