The 'Awareness Aid Kit' and additional elements like the posters, social materials, tote bags, badges, leaflets, mousepads, and notebooks were tailored to resonate with the medical community. From the hand crafted kit outer casing to the brochure inside with its illustrative and typographic layout of each page carefully crafted and considered. Right through to how the stethoscope inside the pack was positioned to perfectly form the heart. All elements came together to create an aesthetically beautiful piece of communication that served to bring awareness of the medical gender data gap and the lesser known signs of women's heart attacks.

Since the 1990s theres been a bit of news to raise awareness of the issue globally. But not enough. And in the Gulf region, the awareness is far less. Making this issue all the more poignant for women in the Arab region, because the medical gender data gap is even wider here and there's a lack of any real government initiatives that help shed light on this gap in knowledge. So by exposing this gap from a real perspective our Mis[s]diagnosed campaign opened eyes and ears about the mass misdiagnosis throughout the region. Sharing this story with key Arabic women of influence and health care professionals across Kuwait, Lebanon, UAE, KSA, Egypt and Bahrain. This helped us to spread the lesser known signs of women's heart attacks to millions of women across the Gulf countries. And for the first time, we were able to meaningfully create awareness and combat the gender data gap addressing the misrepresentation of Arabic women in clinical trials. As a result, Mis[s]diagnosed's story is helping Pharma and healthcare companies diversify their clinical trials and ensuring more inclusive treatment innovations via IPG Health's 'Trial for the #ClinicalEquality Initiative’.

Situation - Cardiovascular diseases are the cause for 1 in every 3 deaths in women globally. This is largely due to decades of medical bias where women had been excluded from clinical trials. Which has left a twenty year medical gender data gap that is putting millions of women’s lives at risk, because women experience heart attacks much differently to men.

Brief - To get to the heart of the matter and raise awareness of the severity of this problem in an impactful and innovative way.

Objectives - To expose and help close the medical gender data gap by spreading mass awareness of the issue and the lesser known signs of women's heart attacks. Then additionally to encourage women in the region to share their data for clinical trials that will help in cardiovascular research and save their futures.

OUTER BOX COPY:

[Mis[s]diagnosed logo]

Awareness Aid Kit

Open Before Emergency

INNER BOX (FRONT)

[Mis[s]diagnosed logo]

Let's make sure her heart is heard so we can close the medical gender data gap

INNER BOX (BACK)

Unusual Fatigue

Lightheadedness

Upper Back Pain,

Neck Pain

Jaw Pain

Nausea

Feeling of Heartburn

Indigestion

Discomfort in One or Both Arms

#KnowTheSigns

INNER TRAY COPY:

Removing the heartbreak from women’s heart attacks.

When it comes to the less known signs of a heart attack, a woman’s symptoms differ greatly from that of men. But from 1970 to 1989 nearly all medical research and studies were conducted only on the bodies of men. ,

This has left a knowledge gap of nearly 20 years on female bodies and behaviours. Resulting in nearly 50% of women’s less known heart attack symptoms being misdiagnosed.

To prove this data gap, we created the Mis[s]diagnosed campaign. Hear her story below and share the less known signs of women’s heart attacks with everyone you know with #KnowTheSigns.

• Unusual Fatigue

• Lightheadedness

• Upper Back, Neck and Jaw Pain

• Nausea

• Feeling of Heartburn or Indigestion

• Discomfort in One or Both Arms

To hear the story of ‘Mis[s]diagnosed’ please place the stethoscope here >

Help us close the medical gender data gap by ensuring her heart is heard.

BROCHURE COPY (FRONT COVER):

[Mis[s]diagnosed logo]

Let's make sure her heart is heard so we can close the medical gender data gap

BROCHURE COPY (BACK COVER):

Organon Here for her health

INSIDE BROCHURE SPREAD 1:

As a leading global healthcare company that's fo cused on women’s health, we’re improving the medical landscape to have better research on heart disease in women. Our commitment is to be here for her health, by listening to her stories and making sure that her voice is

inspiring change.

Here for her health

"That's our promise. It's why we show up every day to turn that promise into a reality. We're called to innovate and support in what has been missing in women's healthcare and are dedicated to improving everyday health for women around the world.

We believe in a better and healthier every day for every woman because women are the backbone of a thriving, stable, and resilient world. We made a promise to put women at the center of everything we do, striving to listen and understand her healthcare needs, big and small, to ensure we provide medicines and other products that allow her to live a better and healthier every day.

At Organon we understand that women are the foundation of a healthier world and that providing a healthier future for women also means providing a healthier future for their families and their communities around the world.

That's why the ‘Mis[s]diagnosed’ campaign was brought to life. Because women are facing a deadly gender data bias that is putting their lives at risk. So, more people can understand the danger women face regionally and across the globe, due to a medical gender data bias. We encourage you to read on to learn more and join our help cause to close the medical gender data gap and save women’s lives everywhere. Every action counts." Ramy Koussa Associate Vice-PresidenT, MENAT Cluster, Organon

INSIDE BROCHURE SPREAD 2:

Let's change her story

The signs of an early heart attack are being missed in 78% of women. This is due to women being the victims of a 20-year knowledge gap where medical research was conducted exclusively on men. This biased data is now putting millions of women’s lives at risk as their symptoms are being dismissed or worse, misdiagnosed.

The stories on the following pages are from some of those women. Sadly, there are thousands more like them, but there doesn't have to be. We just have to #KnowTheSigns and share them. Awareness is the first step in closing the medical gender data gap.

INSIDE BROCHURE SPREAD 3:

"Earlier this year Mum complained of stomach pains which she thought were the result of something she’d eaten. Her symptoms began on Friday afternoon, but Mum wasn’t too concerned so didn’t see her doctor until the following Tuesday. The doctor told her it was gallstones and that it was nothing to worry about. He kept her in for observation overnight and then sent her home the next afternoon.

Soon after Mum got home, she began experiencing chest pains.

We rushed her to the hospital immediately and were told that Mum had had two heart attacks over the past five days. The first one had created a hole in her septum between the left and right ventricles, weakening her heart and almost completely killing the bottom part of the muscle."

Mum died two days later.

INSIDE BROCHURE SPREAD 4:

“Last year I had a heart attack on my

way to work.

I have been a nurse for 24 years, but I didn’t realise what was happening to me.

I had pain in my collarbone and neck, I just thought it was because I’d had a hectic few days. I went to work as normal and hoped the pain would go away.

Two days later the pain became excruciating and spread to my jaw, so my sister called an ambulance. The paramedics told me I was just having a panic attack. It was only when I was seen hours later that I was diagnosed as having had a heart attack.

Knowing how much this delayed diagnosis could have put my life at risk, I wish I’d recognised the symptoms and called an ambulance immediately”.

INSIDE BROCHURE SPREAD 5:

"In July last year I felt light-headed and short of breath at work, I just chalked it up to stress; my husband had just been laid off three days after we’d bought a new house. I was worried about how we'd pay the mortgage.

My coworkers weren't concerned either—not even when I got so dizzy that I had to lie down on the floor by my desk. I asked someone to call my husband, who then drove me to the ER, where I waited 45 minutes while a man with a foot injury was treated first. When I was finally called into an exam room, an EKG revealed that I was having a heart attack. Doctors inserted a stent to restore blood flow to my heart and sent me home five days later with 11 prescriptions.

I did a follow up consultation with a heart specialist who told me that if I'd been a man who had come in with those symptoms, I would've gotten an immediate EKG, but the assumption was that this is ‘probably just another hysterical female who is probably having a panic attack."

INSIDE BROCHURE SPREAD 6:

"I didn’t think I was having a heart attack, I thought it was indigestion.

But when the chest pains started and I felt clammy and disorientated I called an ambulance. When the paramedic arrived he asked me to walk from my car to the ambulance. To me that meant they didn’t think I was having a heart attack, I think they thought I was just panicking. Initially, my doctors wrongly thought that the blood supply to my heart was only partly blocked, so I wasn’t treated as an emergency. I was transferred to a heart unit for treatment, but a shortage of beds there meant I waited 12 hours until I was finally transferred at 4am the following morning. There I was diagnosed as having had a ‘missed STEMI’, meaning that my heart attack had been the most serious type, where an artery supplying the heart is completely blocked, but doctors had missed the window to protect my heart from serious damage.

At 9am I had a stent fitted to restore blood flow to my heart. But that initial misdiagnosis means that I now have to live with heart failure as a result of the attack."

INSIDE BROCHURE SPREAD 7:

I thought my heart attack was just muscle pain. It was an annoying pain that radiated throughout my left arm while I was exercising. I took some over-the-counter pain killers and continued my workout. Then heartburn set in and I assumed it was side-effects of the drugs. It wasn’t until three days later when I felt a strange sensation in my chest at work that my colleagues called an ambulance. I had a mix of nausea, pain, and like someone punched me in my chest. The paramedics said I was probably having a panic attack but took me to the emergency department anyway. I was there for 12 hours, as doctors ran several tests and gave me morphine to manage the pain that waxed and waned. But around midnight, my symptoms worsened, and I was sent for an emergency coronary angiogram to check my heart.   The angiogram confirmed that I was having a heart attack caused by spontaneous coronary artery dissection, otherwise known as SCAD.  

I survived this experience with little to no side effects, but I’m angry that I wasn’t diagnosed sooner. I guess I’m lucky - I could have died. 

INSIDE BROCHURE SPREAD 8:

Let Her Heart Be Heard.

INSIDE BROCHURE SPREAD 9:

We associate heart attacks with chest pain and shortness of breath. However, women can experience them through symptoms that are often misdiagnosed.

Unusual Fatigue

Lightheadedness

Upper Back Pain,

Neck Pain

Jaw Pain

Nausea

Feeling of Heartburn

Indigestion

Discomfort in One or Both Arms

#KnowTheSigns

From the outer packaging to the inner pack and the brochure inside, the Awareness Aid Kit design takes the recipient on a journey. The kit itself was styled to feel like a First Aid Kit while having a modernised look with carefully hand crafted curves and a hand painted outer casing. Inside, we used the Organon brand colours to make the contents stand out and feel vibrant to the eye. A detailed illustrative depiction of the heart is seen on the inner pack cover and this theme is continued through the pages of the brochure with different and beautifully decorative heart illustrations that accent each page layout. To depict our women, we used black and white photography portraits which balance the brighter colours of our design. Real stories were told with flowing typography to depict flowing arteries mixed with bolder editorial style blocks that worked alongside each illustrative element.