There's a narrative in PR that sensitive health topics — fertility, hormones, menopause, infant health — are just harder to pitch, full stop.

Irina Karelina, founder of Fungi PR, has spent a decade proving that's not quite right.

In this episode, Irina breaks down how her agency turned a hormone-literacy campaign for Mira into over a billion media impressions and six awards — without ever putting the product at the center of the pitch.

We get into why journalists ignore evergreen problems, the counterintuitive data insight that outperformed the obvious one, and how she navigates the privacy line when pitching real user stories on deeply personal topics.If you work in digital PR, link building, or content marketing and you've ever struggled to make a "boring" or sensitive topic newsworthy, this one's for you.

⏰ Timestamps

00:00 - Intro

04:48 - What actually makes these topics hard to pitch

08:37 - Case study: Carrot Fertility & Evvy's "Equal Research Day"

13:19 - Tactical breakdown: awareness weeks, the hormone tester stunt

14:42 - Quick-turn campaigns: COVID vaccine and GLP-1 drugs

16:53 - Finding trends through social listening

18:48 - The biggest mindset shift

21:14 - Common mistakes PRs make with data pitches

24:19 - Handling sensitive topics without exploiting sources

28:47 - Bridging the gap between PR and marketing teams

30:41 - Building trust with client teams as a freelancer

😀 Connect with Irina Karelina:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karelina/?locale=en-US

• Fungi PR: https://fungipr.com/

🐝 Try ListIQ (AI-powered media list building):https://www.buzzstream.com/listiq/ — get free credits when you sign up

🔗 See the full episode: https://www.buzzstream.com/blog/sensitive-pr-podcast/

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