How AI and Storytelling Are Changing Healthcare (E.287)

“If patients don’t trust the story, they won’t trust the science.” ~Aleisia Gibson Wright

The future of healthcare marketing doesn’t live in algorithms—it lives in the stories we tell.

In this episode, Regan Robertson sits down with Aleisia Gibson Wright, founder of GW Health Public Relations, for a deep dive into how emerging technology like AI is reshaping healthcare—and why the human side of communication matters more than ever.

Recorded live at POSSIBLE 2025, the most impactful marketing event in the industry, this conversation blends cutting-edge insights with real-world wisdom for healthcare leaders, brand strategists, and changemakers.

You’ll learn:

• Why storytelling is essential in a world driven by AI and data
• The growing role of public relations in shaping healthcare trust
• How to balance innovation with empathy in patient communication
• Why diverse representation in healthcare marketing isn’t optional
• Real examples of how to simplify complex medical language without dumbing it down

Whether you’re in healthcare, tech, marketing, or just passionate about ethical innovation—this episode will help you reimagine what’s possible when humanity and technology grow together.

Key Reflection Questions for Listeners

• Are we building technology that truly meets human needs—or just chasing features?
• Do our brand messages reflect the diversity of patients we serve?
• What stories are we telling about care, and are they building trust or confusion?

Listen now and rethink how we connect in a tech-powered world.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:56] Regan Robertson: Welcome to another episode of Everyday Practices Done Podcast. I am your [00:01:00] host, Reagan Robertson, coming to you live sans Chad, Sans Maggie, because I am at the possible event in Miami, this is where the world’s largest, and I do mean the world’s largest chief marketing officers and innovators gather.

[00:01:14] Regan Robertson: There are 5,200 people here. It’s like. South by Southwest for marketing nerds. And one of the great things about attending events like this is just like you doctor, the ability to network and meet like-minded peers that you just, they get you excited, they get you jazzed up again, and they inspire you.

[00:01:32] Regan Robertson: And I’m bringing on a guest live. From Miami, Alicia Gibson Wright, uh, she is a woman and entrepreneur that I met during a table talk, and we both connected immediately discussing media and patient communication and being authentic and what it means in today’s world as it’s rapidly changing with AI and everything else going on.

[00:01:54] Aleisia Gibson Wright: Alicia, welcome to our podcast. Oh my gosh, Reagan, it was, first of all, it was so much fun sitting next to you [00:02:00] as, or sitting across from you on that table talk. I think the discussion here has just been so fruitful in terms of all the things, the possibilities for AI and what that means even for patient care.

[00:02:13] Aleisia Gibson Wright: I mean, a lot of this conversation is about consumers, but we gotta remember, patients are consumers, you know, and, and the way we are operating now, patients are functioning as, you know, the, they expect more. And because they’re paid more and they expect more and it, the consumer patient convergence has happened and AI I think will be.

[00:02:38] Aleisia Gibson Wright: The reason why it will continue, I

[00:02:42] Regan Robertson: could, I agree wholeheartedly in some of these speakers that we’ve heard. Um, I heard the CMO of Visa get up with the Institute for Futures, um, Dylan, somebody and, and they were talking about how virtual assistance and AI will just become part of our lives together. Take our listeners back a little bit and your [00:03:00] organization is GW Health Public Relations.

[00:03:02] Regan Robertson: Uh, let, like introduce yourself and give everybody a little bit of a history about yourself and then why you’re so passionate about, uh, communications and PR in general.

[00:03:12] Aleisia Gibson Wright: Yeah, absolutely. So I have been in PR for 25 years. I’ve worked at most of the big agencies, uh, in PR and in advertising, but always in a PR capacity and I’ve always worked in healthcare Atlas.

[00:03:26] Aleisia Gibson Wright: That’s been my passion. It will always be my passion. I will never. Pedal shoes, I never will. So what fueled me to step out on my own about seven months ago was the fact that even being at the helm of some of these large, um, products of pharmaceutical products being launched, it, it just was just me as a black woman around the table for the most part.

[00:03:53] Aleisia Gibson Wright: And when you have like a limited. When you have a li a limited amount of [00:04:00] influence or. Not a depth or breadth of influence for all people. That’s a problem. It’s a problem, especially in something as personal and specific as healthcare in how we all engage in healthcare, how we communicate about healthcare, what our, you know, what our, our history is.

[00:04:19] Aleisia Gibson Wright: When it comes to healthcare, so I stepped out on my own to try to do it better, and that really is to connect culture and health, what that means, being specific. I. To how people will receive information. So that, that’s why I’m here and that’s, that’s my purpose

[00:04:38] Regan Robertson: there is you are at the perfect time in history.

[00:04:41] Regan Robertson: I think for this to happen, and something that I say often is people wanna be seen, they wanna be heard, and they want to be understood more than anything else. And it shocks me how many times we overlook large, like as a collective. And you think of large organizations in particular. Overlook certain segments.

[00:04:59] Regan Robertson: [00:05:00] And if Dr. Maggie were here right now, she’d be falling over with excitement because she’s particularly excited also about making sure that people are seen and people are hurt. And, and what you and I were connecting on yesterday was, uh, consumers have money, even if they are in, in, you know, um, in a demographic that wouldn’t be wildly Right.

[00:05:18] Regan Robertson: Recognized typically. And they still have needs. And now we are in this. Not one to many way of marketing out to people, but many, to many, and personalizing that message for them. So talk to me about, uh, your endeavors and specifically how you’re interested in personalizing that experience so that people that you want to serve are educated about oral systemic care, are educated about what’s available to them, and um, and they can onboard it and hear it in their language and be ready to.

[00:05:50] Regan Robertson: Take that next step.

[00:05:51] Aleisia Gibson Wright: So I’ll, I’ll start with you had me at oral care because oral care is, I think, something that’s been so overlooked [00:06:00] in certain populations, right? I. We know that black and Hispanics tend to over index in cavities, in periodontal disease and the whole spectrum. And a large part of that is because of access.

[00:06:13] Aleisia Gibson Wright: Limitations in access. I mean, and when we talk about access, we can’t forget like the rural communities that are, you know, left with what? I think there’s a stat, it’s like 25 dentists for every 100,000. People in certain, in certain states that’s not tenable, of course people are gonna be left out. And what we know about oral care is a healthy mouth or an unhealthy mouth equals a healthy or unhealthy body.

[00:06:41] Aleisia Gibson Wright: And all of the sort of, um, diseases that we, so. That are so prevalent. Diabetes heart. Yes. Heart care or, or cardiology. All of those things are all interconnected with our oral care. And [00:07:00] nobody, uh, people don’t realize this. I think there was a study maybe like a decade ago that showed that there was an, uh, an a correlation between oral health.

[00:07:10] Aleisia Gibson Wright: Yes. And cardiovascular.

[00:07:12] Regan Robertson: Absolutely. Through your corroded artery. Yes. So cor and genetics and all the other risk finders. Shout out Dr. Bradley Bale and Amy Donne.

[00:07:20] Aleisia Gibson Wright: Yeah. All of all of all of those really important things and what I know, just having worked in healthcare for so long you, it’s amazing that you just learn all of this stuff.

[00:07:31] Aleisia Gibson Wright: What I learned was that some. Some, uh, nationalities, black people in particular have more grooves in their teeth, in their molars, which. Predisposes them for cavities. I didn’t know that I, and that’s city. Yeah, I know it because I am a black mother. Right. Who had a one-year-old, as soon as that tooth, her first tooth came up, like we’re in the dentist.

[00:07:55] Aleisia Gibson Wright: Like that thing is getting treated. So, so the tooth came up, [00:08:00] the molars came up and they had she cavities. So there are more grooves

[00:08:05] Regan Robertson: in black people’s teeth. Than other nationalities. So

[00:08:10] Aleisia Gibson Wright: yeah, apparently according to my, my children’s orthodontist or their dentist is. This is, this is common. This is how our teeth are different.

[00:08:20] Aleisia Gibson Wright: And you have to think like there are structural differences between the races and that’s why you can’t overlook. Yeah. Or you can’t broad brush, you know, treatments. Yeah. Just because the person is a human, there is some specificity that needs to happen even in, in dentistry and oral care. So tell me

[00:08:39] Regan Robertson: what, what your impression of this event has been.

[00:08:43] Regan Robertson: Because I, I wanna go into the how of how you help your clients and how you help the message get out, especially around the education because this education piece, especially in rural areas, we know is important. But you and I are both here to stay on the cutting edge and to figure out what’s [00:09:00] coming down the pike.

[00:09:00] Regan Robertson: This totally reminds me of South by Southwest 20 20 12 era. A lot of people are saying. The AI is like, uh, like the internet only more, or like electricity, like it’s that big of an adventure. So what have you, what are your big, like three takeaways so far, those you?

[00:09:18] Aleisia Gibson Wright: Okay, so biggest, my big takeaways are the fact, to your point, AI is not going anywhere.

[00:09:25] Aleisia Gibson Wright: You either get on board. Or you get left on the platform. I can’t be left on the platform because working in a field like communications, it’s. You have to be relevant. You have to stay up on what is happening in your industry. And I think there are huge changes that we are just on like the precipice of like it’s about to happen.

[00:09:47] Aleisia Gibson Wright: AI, I think, will help us in the long run, but I think there are so many blind spots in AI that we’ve gotta, as fast as it’s moving, we’ve gotta be able to correct it just as [00:10:00] quickly. We need AI to help AI because, you know, in, in working in healthcare, like one of the, the, the big issues is that there are so many medical inaccuracies in medical texts.

[00:10:13] Aleisia Gibson Wright: It is, you would be shocked. Tiny. How many you say medical texts? You mean like textbooks? Text messages. Text what? At text check. All of D. All of the above. Oh yes. So doctors are learning. Erroneous things. I mean their, their bloggers now, they’ve sort of brought a lot of this to, to bear just on even how we are assessing humans and assessing people of color.

[00:10:40] Aleisia Gibson Wright: It’s not based on fact, it’s a based on a guy from 80, 18 hundreds who came up with a theory and you know, however it is, it made it into medical tests and it’s still. It’s still affecting people of color, and that’s why we have so many health disparities because we’re not being treated the [00:11:00] right way. Or, um, certain scans that we have, like kidney disease, for example, are erroneous in their assessments.

[00:11:09] Aleisia Gibson Wright: So, I mean, I, I’m not a nephrologist, but there are things and anybody can go on the internet and find that these people are talking about these things now. So, you know, I, I think there’s a lot of, lot of really great things, uh, in ai. I mean, it’s gonna help with triaging patients when they come into the er.

[00:11:30] Aleisia Gibson Wright: Um, mental health will be significantly improved, I think, potentially by. Some of the, the, the new, new technologies like artificial intelligence. I think there are a lot of really great things. We just have to make sure we are correcting as quickly as we are. Moving, you know, we’ve, we’ve gotta stay, we’ve gotta keep these things parallel.

[00:11:54] Regan Robertson: My, my big takeaway from this, which brings me so much hope and inspiration and joy, [00:12:00] is I definitely think of AI as a tool. And I, I came up in the generation where I saw the hand-drawn artist go over into Photoshop, and I saw the fear and panic at that point in time. Uh, and, and I was just excited and motivated by it because I found it to be a way that.

[00:12:16] Regan Robertson: It’s, it’s how we could elevate our work instead of replace our work. And we sound that, um, artists are still prolific and beautiful and gorgeous. And hand illustration is still, still has a place in this world. So I think of AI in the same way. Um, from a marketing lens, my big number one takeaway is human connectionists will always be ent.

[00:12:35] Regan Robertson: Yes. The buzz word, authenticity. Um, I have heard that probably every workshop I’ve been at so far. So, truth, authenticity, gen Z, values reality and truth. Um, predominantly so they can see through a scripted brand. Yeah, any day of the week. So throw away your scripts, throw away what you’re supposed to think.

[00:12:55] Regan Robertson: I believe that it’s gonna be a lot more difficult to be truly authentic, um, for a lot of [00:13:00] brands. Um, then they might think, because it does mean being vulnerable, being transparent and being real. Bobby Brown from the, she did the big, oh, I miss that soldier. She was so upset of all the speakers. Like, I saw Martha Stewart on stage.

[00:13:14] Regan Robertson: I saw, um, Gary Vaynerchuk on stage, and when she came up, she. To me was one of the first speakers that demonstrated being authentic. She showed up in jeans. She had her very minimalist makeup. She had, um, like a t-shirt with her little cardigan over it. And she said, you know, when I feel comfortable, I’m more confident.

[00:13:31] Regan Robertson: Which we always, we always say that, right? When you’re, when you’re comfortable, you’re confident. Um, but she explained her, her, her take on how she brought that to life. And a lot of it was. Squashing down fear, and so I’m taking away from this conference. Storytelling will be absolutely paramount. AI can support us in it and the brands that are intentional with ai, and you and I know how many areas AI can show up in a patient’s journey.

[00:13:58] Regan Robertson: And if it shows up bad, [00:14:00] then trust is broken. So for example, an AI bot called me from an imaging center. And to go get some imaging done. They called me on the phone and I was like, oh goodness. Oh, hi. I am talking to an AI bot. And they said, we we’re gonna schedule your appointment for you. We need to connect you with someone.

[00:14:15] Regan Robertson: They connected me to voicemail. Oh, see? Yeah. And I was immediately put off. And so if you think about those little micro moments of trust where trust is built with a brand and broken, it was broken. And that’s because we’re in the Wild West era. I think of ai. Hard. It’s messy. Or if you see a little baby chick that’s really cute and then a hen that’s really pretty, but that middle.

[00:14:35] Regan Robertson: Phase.

[00:14:35] Aleisia Gibson Wright: It’s a very ugly chicken. Yeah. Where, yeah, where the, the feathers are kind of gray and brown. Yeah. Yes.

[00:14:41] Regan Robertson: We got it. Yeah. Um, and I, I think, I think, I think I am, I know personally I put my eggs in the right basket. I mean, I really have focused on the last five years on developing my storytelling ability.

[00:14:52] Regan Robertson: And then for, um, productive Dentist Academy and all, we’ve always valued great storytelling. And so I think AI will just be a, a [00:15:00] supplemental tool that we can use, but it’s gonna be applied in every way and, and. You guys listening, I want you to prepare yourself. It’s not just storytelling to humans. It’s going to be how to get our own AI agents.

[00:15:12] Regan Robertson: And if you dunno what an AI agent is, google it and or ask chat GPT. Ask your AI agent to talk to another AI agent, because that’s where the world is going. So how we interact and how we sculpt those relationships is gonna be major I think in the next 10 years. I, I couldn’t

[00:15:28] Aleisia Gibson Wright: agree. More. And to your point, the key takeaway is storytelling is critical because while there is artificial intelligence, the impact of that artificiality is real impact.

[00:15:41] Aleisia Gibson Wright: So we need to make sure that. We have real people telling the story to connect all of it. It is critical. And it’s not gonna go away. It’s not gonna go away. It can’t.

[00:15:54] Regan Robertson: I agree. Uh, I love, you know, um, everybody listening. I love to give really big actionable takeaways. So, okay, [00:16:00]here’s what I have learned that you can put into practice right now.

[00:16:02] Regan Robertson: So go look at your social media. If you are doing like, kind of canned posts, for example, or a post in a blog and it’s just got like, maybe you’re even using AI yourself to like generate posts content and you’re not seeing a lot of engagement. Uh, Gary Vanner, Chu’s number one takeaway was organic content that is relevant, relevant, relevant, that wins the day.

[00:16:21] Regan Robertson: Over viral. So don’t boost posts that are just out there for being out there’s sake. Um, be organic in your posts. Be relevant, and that is what is going to get you the views. That’s my my number one, like big takeaway from today. Something you can put into practice. Did

[00:16:36] Aleisia Gibson Wright: you learn anything? I did. Okay. Yeah. I I, I learned to, what you’re saying is don’t, don’t buy your reach, earn it.

[00:16:43] Aleisia Gibson Wright: Yes. Yes. Earn your reach. And you can only do that when people feel that you are. Telling a story or engaging them in a way in which everything about them says that they should be engaged with. And you, you only know that by doing homework. Do your homework. [00:17:00] Find out who your audience is. Get to know your audience.

[00:17:02] Aleisia Gibson Wright: You need data before you even attempt to try something creative. And I’m, I’m, I’m with Gary. I think if you need to really prove it. Put your creative, for example, on social and see what it is. See what the engagement is. Don’t boost it, don’t push it, let it, let it do it. Let it do what it do. You can build a

[00:17:26] Regan Robertson: community that way.

[00:17:27] Regan Robertson: And I’ve read about community building, um, at this event too, about finding, finding that group of people that resonates with you. Mm-hmm. And, um, and it can be seductive to want to get quantity of patients. Uh, and a lot of the productive dentists that I work with, they’re really discerning, they are willing to be brave and say, you know, these are the services that I’m really good at and I’m really passionate about.

[00:17:48] Regan Robertson: Mm-hmm. And, um, and there are some doctors that are particularly passionate about airway, for example. And so when you are able to niche, niche, there’s your shout out Chubb niche or niche, uh, into what you’re most passionate about. You tend to find the [00:18:00] people that you’re supposed to find. And I think with the organic content, like you said, you know, earn it, uh, that really helps you figure that out.

[00:18:07] Regan Robertson: Who, who is your audience and what did they resonate with the most? Absolutely. Well, thank you Alicia for this feeling great. Oh

[00:18:14] Aleisia Gibson Wright: gosh. I’m so glad that we sat at that table and we talked and this is so much fun.

[00:18:19] Regan Robertson: Me too. If people want to find you and know more, um, about I. GW Health, public Relations, where do they go and how do they connect with you?

[00:18:27] Aleisia Gibson Wright: You can look, look me up on, on LinkedIn or my website. My name is Alicia and that’s spelled A-L-E-I-S-I-A. Not to be confused with Alicia, uh Gibson, G-I-B-S-O-N Wright, W-R-I-G-H ht dot on LinkedIn. Um, and that can connect you to gw health pr.com. Thank you very much. What a pleasure.

[00:18:53] Regan Robertson: Thank you for listening to another episode of Everyday Practices Podcast.

[00:18:56] Regan Robertson: It would mean the world if you can help spread the word by sharing this [00:19:00] episode with a fellow dentist and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. Do you have an extraordinary story you’d like to share or feedback on how we can make this podcast even more Awesome. Drop us an email at podcast. At productive dentist.com.

[00:19:14] Regan Robertson: And don’t forget to check out our other podcasts from Productive Dentist academy@productivedentist.com slash podcasts. See you next week.