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Getting the word out about medical breakthroughs has long been a goal of the research community as well as the foundations and government agencies that fund such work. Historically, that knowledge dissemination took the form of publishing articles in scholarly journals and presenting at conferences attended by other professionals with similar interests. If the breakthrough was big or splashy enough, it might attract media interest and result in a newspaper or TV story. But media coverage was the exception, not the rule.
“Disseminating our research findings to a broad audience is important,” says Allen Heinemann, PhD, Director of the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research (CROR) at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, which conducts research dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities. “The Biblical phrase about bushel baskets comes to mind. If you’re doing great work but no one knows about it, it doesn’t exist.”
Two years ago, Heinemann decided that CROR should expand the way it gets the word out to include a monthly podcast. CROR brought on Sharon Parmet, a veteran healthcare communicator, to make that happen. “INside the OUTcomes: A Rehabilitation Research Podcast” went live in March 2023 with a series of podcasts focused on its research. CROR promoted their existence through its newsletters and website, but as with many new podcasts, it was a challenge to attract listeners. About 100 people listened to the early episodes of “INside the OUTcomes,” which was available on Apple and Spotify, the two most popular platforms for podcasts. Last year, Parmet expanded the distribution to include YouTube, a website best known for its video content.
The timing was fortuitous. It was October, which happened to be National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and YouTube featured an episode of the podcast as a suggested “view next” video. The episode told the story of how vocational rehabilitation counselors at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab helped a Chicago woman get back to work after a stroke affected her short-term memory. The episode had a large number of early listens and has garnered more than 6,000 since then. “Platforms matter and so does content,” says Parmet. “Podcasts where it’s someone talking about their own personal experience are the ones that do the best. I’ve done several that are on spinal cord injury-related topics and those have done well, too.”
Since its breakthrough last year, subsequent “INside the OUTcomes” episodes have received more than 1,000 listens, Parmet says. Other things have changed as well. The podcasts started out being about an hour long but have gravitated over time to be around 20 to 30 minutes. A recent one about a holistic exercise and mindfulness program for people with mobility issues was only 11 minutes long. “As they’ve gotten shorter, they’ve gotten more listens,” Parmet notes.
As a medium, podcasting took the Internet by storm back in 2014 with “Serial,” the true-crime tale of a murdered teenager in Maryland. When “Serial” debuted only about 30% of Americans had ever listened to a podcast, according to Edison Research, which has tracked the industry for the past 15 years. By 2024, that number had more than doubled to 67%, or 192 million people. Today almost half of U.S. teenagers report listening to a podcast, and a high percentage of podcast listeners hold college degrees. But there are an estimated 2.5 million U.S. podcasts vying for an audience. Many podcasts never gain much traction and eventually they go away, a phenomenon dubbed “pod fade.”
Medical topics are a natural fit for the podcast medium, says Abigail Foerstner, who teaches health and science reporting to graduate students at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. To break through the clutter, it’s important that a podcast provides useful information to its listeners in a conversational way. “That’s key for a podcast,” she says. “It’s got to be fun to listen to and still deliver on the fact that the research is an advance on some previous research.”
Finding an audience in the rapidly expanding Wild West of podcasts isn’t easy, but it can be done, says Thea Flaum, an Emmy Award-winning TV producer who created the website FacingDisability.com to help people and families living with spinal cord injuries. Even though there are millions of podcasts in the U.S., there wasn’t one that was directed at children and teens who had to navigate the world in wheelchairs so she decided to create one. The podcast, “I Was a Wheelchair Kid,” debuted in 2024 with five episodes, each featuring the personal story of a teenager--now an adult--who grew up using a wheelchair. The podcasts, which are 15 minutes or less, have titles like “Finding Normal,” “Losing Friends and Finding New Ones,” and “The Bully Who Changed My Life.”
“Nobody is going to listen if the story isn’t good,” Flaum says. “ Also, you really need to be sure you’re meeting a need, and you have to promote the podcasts relentlessly to the potential audience.” “I Was a Wheelchair Kid” is produced in conjunction with CROR and is funded in part by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), which funds much of CROR’s research as well as its podcast.
Parmet and Heinemann want to make sure that “INside the OUTcomes” survives and thrives. “We’re looking for growth year over year in building our listenership,” says Heinemann. Given the success of the vocational rehabilitation podcast, Parmet hopes to include more real people in future podcasts. “Incorporating more people with lived experience of disability is a goal of mine for the third season,” Parmet says.