Real Housewives and Olympians and social media-famous physicians, oh my! Ferring Pharmaceuticals has assembled a roster of familiar faces to boost its community-building efforts around fertility, tied to this week’s World IVF Day.
World IVF Day is celebrated every year on July 25 in honor of the day the first baby was born via in vitro fertilization in 1978. The awareness day “reminds us how far fertility care has come and how much further we need to go,” David Powley, Ferring’s vice president of reproductive medicine, said in a Monday announcement.
Ahead of this year’s commemoration, Ferring has recruited “Real Housewives of New York City” star Jessel Taank, gold-medal-winning figure skater Tara Lipinski and well-known reproductive endocrinologist Lucky Sekhon, M.D., to continue the company’s work to normalize discussions about infertility by sharing their own experiences with IVF.
The starry group will help spotlight Ferring’s “Fertility Out Loud” platform. The site launched in 2021 to offer information about infertility and treatment options, provide helpful resources and share real stories from people at various points on their fertility journeys.
All three of Ferring’s new celebrity partners have firsthand experience with using IVF to grow their families, and all expressed in statements the importance of community throughout the process.
As Lipinski said, “What helped me most was connecting with others and leaning on trusted resources for comfort and guidance. That kind of perspective, reassurance and encouragement is exactly what Fertility Out Loud provides. While becoming a parent is deeply personal, by sharing our stories, we can help uplift each other.”
Ferring is the maker of several fertility-related products, including Menopur and Novarel, used to induce ovulation in women experiencing infertility, and Endometrin, which provides extra progesterone to women undergoing fertility treatments.
In the years since launching the unbranded Fertility Out Loud platform, the company has continued to add new resources to the site, like the 2022 introduction of text-message-based access to live fertility coaches and 2023’s debut of a docuseries tracking four couples’ diverse paths to parenthood.
Most recently, last summer, Ferring partnered with virtual male fertility clinic Posterity Health to roll out educational information and a confidential digital assessment to help men better understand their own fertility issues and fight stigma in that realm.