Healthy Skepticism Library item: 1127

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Pallarito K.
New Primary Care Journal Refuses Drug Ads
Reuters Health 2003 May 15

Full text:

Six family medical organizations will launch a new research journal this month that stands apart from many other peer-reviewed publications in a very visible way: it won’t run pharmaceutical advertising.

The new Annals of Family Medicine, an outlet for healthcare research focusing on the whole person, will be supported mainly through dues paid by members of the sponsoring organizations. The journal will accept classified advertisements but has invoked a ban on commercial drug advertising.

Several major medical journals have taken steps to curb the pharmaceutical industry’s influence over published research results and improve disclosure of financial ties with the drug industry, yet they continue to take money from pharmaceutical manufacturers to run ads for their products.

“Journals are doing a lot of work now to try to avoid the conflicts-of-interest involved in that,” explained Annals of Family Medicine Editor Dr. Kurt Stange, a family physician, epidemiologist and professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Dr. Jesse Gruman, executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Health and a member of the journal’s editorial board, said the decision by Dr. Stange and the board to take drug ads off the table as an issue reflects a strong commitment by the sponsoring medical groups.

“In some ways, it’s a real statement,” she told Reuters Health. If it works, it could “really be a challenge to the status quo.”

With backing from the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Board of Family Practice, Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, Association of Departments of Family Medicine, Association of Family Practice Residency Directors and the North American Primary Care Research Group, the Annals of Family Medicine will strive to fill a gap in existing peer-reviewed literature.

“I work in the business of trying to make the best possible use of scientific information in healthcare policy and practice, and one of the problems we see again and again is that research doesn’t answer the questions people have,” Dr. Gruman said.

To bridge the gap, the bimonthly journal seeks to run content crossing various disciplines and focusing on those things providers on the front lines need to know to work better.

For the audience the journal is targeting, “the latest little quiver of some liver enzyme” is less important than “talking to people about taking their drugs right,” for instance, Dr. Gruman said.

The Annals also serves as an outlet for the growing body of evidence being produced by researchers in primary care-based settings, Dr. Stange said.

The premier issue will feature studies on prostate cancer screening, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and Cesarean section, among others.