December can be a tricky month for healthcare content.
There are Christmas campaigns competing for attention, people are busy, routines change and organisations may be preparing to wind down for the festive break.
But health doesn’t stop for Christmas.
In fact, December brings its own set of healthcare challenges. Winter illnesses are circulating, colder weather can exacerbate some long-term conditions, mental health can be affected by the pressures of the festive season, and changes to opening hours can make accessing healthcare more complicated.
For healthcare brands, clinics, pharmacies and health-focused organisations, December content should be useful, timely and easy to act on.
Here’s what you could add to your December healthcare content calendar.
What’s Happening This Month?
By December, winter is well underway.
Colds, flu and other respiratory illnesses are likely to be highly relevant to patients, while colder temperatures can affect people living with certain long-term health conditions.
Christmas also changes how people behave.
Normal routines may disappear for a couple of weeks. People travel, stay with family, eat and drink differently, sleep at different times and potentially forget about things such as repeat prescriptions until their usual healthcare provider has closed for Christmas.
For others, December can be a particularly difficult time emotionally. Financial pressures, grief, loneliness, complicated family relationships and the expectation that everybody should be having a wonderful time can make the festive season challenging.
Your healthcare content can reflect that reality.
Relevant December Awareness Campaigns
Depending on your organisation and audience, December includes several awareness dates you might want to incorporate into your content calendar, including:
- World AIDS Day on 1 December
- International Day of Persons with Disabilities on 3 December
- Grief Awareness Week in early December
- Human Rights Day on 10 December
As always, don’t feel you need to publish something for every health-related awareness date you encounter.
Choose topics that genuinely connect with your organisation and give yourself enough space to create something useful.
December Content Opportunities
December content doesn’t have to be Christmas content.
Think about what information your patients, customers or wider audience might need throughout the month and into the festive period.
Here are a few ideas.
Blog Ideas
1. How to Look After Your Health Over the Festive Period
Create a practical guide covering relevant aspects of health and wellbeing without turning Christmas into a list of things people “shouldn’t” be doing.
2. What to Do If You Need Healthcare Over Christmas
Explain the options available when GP practices, pharmacies or other healthcare services have different opening hours. Make sure this is appropriate to your audience and location and clearly explain where people should seek urgent or emergency care.
3. Don’t Run Out: Preparing Your Prescriptions for Christmas
Encourage people taking regular medication to check what they have left and order repeat prescriptions in plenty of time before festive closures.
4. Managing a Long-Term Health Condition During Christmas
Explore some of the practical challenges that changes in routine, travel, medication schedules and social events can create for people managing long-term conditions.
5. Why Does Cold Weather Affect Your Health?
Depending on your area of healthcare, you could discuss respiratory conditions, circulation, joint symptoms, skin health or cardiovascular health.
6. Christmas Isn’t Always Merry: Looking After Your Mental Health During the Festive Season
Acknowledge some of the reasons December can be difficult and provide compassionate, evidence-based information about coping strategies and accessing support.
Patient Resource Idea: Your Christmas Healthcare Checklist
December lends itself particularly well to practical resources that patients can save or print.
A simple Christmas healthcare checklist could remind people to:
- Check how much prescription medication they have
- Order repeat prescriptions early
- Check Christmas opening hours for relevant healthcare services
- Make sure they have any everyday healthcare supplies they need
- Take medication with them if travelling
- Know where to seek help if they become unwell
- Keep important healthcare information accessible when away from home
The exact information will depend on your audience, but the principle is simple: anticipate the problems people might encounter and help them prepare.
You could offer the checklist as a webpage, printable PDF, email resource or social media carousel.
Email Topic: Before You Switch Off for Christmas
If your organisation sends patient or customer emails, December is an ideal time for a useful pre-Christmas reminder.
Rather than simply sending festive greetings, give your audience information they might actually need.
You could include your Christmas opening hours, prescription deadlines, information about accessing services during closures, links to your most useful winter health resources and details of when normal services resume.
It’s practical content delivered at exactly the point people are likely to need it.
Content Spotlight: Christmas and Mental Health
December marketing often assumes everybody is excited about Christmas.
Healthcare content needs to leave room for people who aren’t.
Christmas can magnify grief, loneliness, financial difficulties, family tensions and existing mental health problems. Some people may be spending their first Christmas following the loss of a loved one. Others may be estranged from their families, struggling financially, providing care for somebody else, or simply finding the pressure to be cheerful exhausting.
That doesn’t mean healthcare organisations need to make December content relentlessly sombre.
It does mean there’s value in acknowledging that Christmas can be complicated.
Think carefully about the language you use. Avoid implying that everybody has family to visit, money to spend, parties to attend, or a safe and supportive home environment.
Most importantly, make sure mental health content doesn’t end with vague instructions to “practise self-care”.
Provide practical suggestions, explain when somebody may benefit from professional support and include appropriate signposting towards further help.
Sometimes, one of the most valuable things health content can do is simply acknowledge that someone’s experience exists.
Writer’s Perspective: Repurposing One Topic Into Multiple Formats
December is busy for your audience, and it’s probably busy for your marketing team too.
That makes it a particularly good month to get more from the healthcare content you’ve already invested in.
One well-researched article doesn’t need to remain one article.
Imagine you’ve commissioned a detailed guide about managing asthma during winter.
That single piece of research could potentially become an FAQ page answering common winter asthma questions, a patient checklist, several social media posts, an email newsletter and a short resource for healthcare professionals.
You aren’t simply copying and pasting the same information everywhere. You’re taking the same core evidence and adapting it to suit different audiences, formats and stages of the patient journey.
It can also help you maintain consistency. Instead of creating five completely separate pieces of content about the same subject, you have one evidence base informing everything you publish.
That’s useful any time of year, but it’s especially valuable when December calendars are already packed.
This Month’s Content Challenge
Check what your website tells patients about accessing your services over Christmas.
Could somebody easily find your opening hours?
Do they know when to order repeat prescriptions?
If you’re closed, have you clearly explained where they can find appropriate support instead?
And is all of that information somewhere patients can actually find it without having to dig through your website?
If not, add updating your festive healthcare information to your December content list.
Need Help With Your December Healthcare Content?
December might be a shorter working month, but there’s still plenty your healthcare content needs to do.
If you need help creating useful, evidence-based content before the festive break, I can help.
I write patient-facing and HCP content for healthcare brands, agencies, pharmacies, clinics and health-focused organisations, from blogs and website copy to FAQs, educational resources and campaign content.
Whether you’re planning a winter health campaign, updating existing resources or trying to get January’s content ready before everybody disappears for Christmas, I can take the research and writing off your plate.
Planning your December healthcare content? Book your free discovery call or send me an email to discuss your project.
If you’ve found this useful, feel free to fuel my caffeine addiction at Ko-fi
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