DEI with Our Business Partners: A Q&A with Dante Gaudio

How does diversity, equity and inclusion come to life behind the scenes at Healthline Media? We sat down with key internal leaders to find out. In this Q&A series, we’re peeling back the curtain to show how we’re walking the talk at every level of our business.

Can you explain the importance of DEI from a revenue partner perspective?

DEI is an increasingly important component of our partnerships in the marketplace. Who we choose to do business with is a real-world demonstration of our values and priorities as a company. 

Just as Healthline Media’s Medical Affairs team carefully evaluates every featured product, we need to be equally intentional about diversity, equity and inclusion when deciding who to work with. If companies don’t meet our standards across key critical areas, then we can give them an opportunity to change, or we can choose not to work with them. To be clear, we are very open to sharing our best practices and strategies for prioritizing DEI organizationally. Dialogue and partnership will help all of us in the digital media landscape be a more inclusive, diverse industry.

This also sends a clear message to the marketplace that Healthline Media sees DEI as a critical issue. Things like equity, inclusion and our vision of making good health accessible for everyone are not a “topic of the moment” for us...it’s a top priority today and will continue to be so in the future. Additionally, we want our internal stakeholders to know that DEI is a long-term investment for RV Health and we intend to drive meaningful change both internally and externally.  

What processes or practices do you engage in before establishing a partnership or taking on new business?

We’ve always looked at financial and brand/product integrity as key criteria for evaluating potential partners. We want to align ourselves with companies who share our values, or whose products align with our mission and vision. (For example, we don’t accept advertising from alcohol brands, because it may detract from our reputation for promoting healthy actions.)

Now, we evaluate brands and products based on their DEI integrity, too.

Version 1.0 includes an assessment by the Content Integrity Team based on DEI criteria, focusing on what we can discover from various databases and/or asking the potential partners directly. (I say “1.0” because I would love to make this a deeper and more engaging process in the future. But this is a great first step.)

Is it possible for another brand or organizations’ actions to impact our partnership decisions?

Short answer? Yes.

We’ve always taken a long view on partnerships and building our business, and as such, we have a history of saying “no” to potential revenue or business opportunities that provide only a short-term benefit (and potentially long-term risks). We’ve turned down dozens of opportunities where the potential partner violated our data privacy policy, for example.

Will we make similar decisions based on DEI criteria? My hope is we won’t have to. But if we see that a potential partner is clearly misaligned with our perspective and values around diversity and inclusion, we’ll follow the same long-term view to guide our decision-making. In short, DEI is a best business practice...and we will now expect our partners to be on the same page as us. Again, we intend to drive change here...and we will. 

Learn more about our commitment to DEI in other areas:

Click here to explore more about our guiding approach.