FDA 'Bad Ad' Program Raises Awareness of Provider Role in Ensuring Truthful Prescription Drug Promotion

June 23, 2011 9:36 AM Topics: Prescriptions

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research has reported on the success of its "Bad Ad" outreach program, launched May 11, 2010, to educate health care providers about their role in ensuring that prescription drug advertising is truthful and not misleading. The Bad Ad Program provides guidance on recognizing misleading advertising and encourages health care providers to report suspected untruthful or misleading drug promotion. Through communications materials, conference presentations, and a live Webinar developed for pharmacists and other health care providers, FDA raised awareness about the program and its goals over the past year. As a result of the program, the number of reports about potentially untruthful or misleading promotions increased over 215% from an average of 104 reports per year to 328 reports since the program launch. Of these reports, 188 were submitted by health care providers, and of those, 87 were identified for a comprehensive review. FDA notes that these numbers demonstrate “a relatively strong level of knowledge in the medical community about what constitutes misleading promotion.”
FDA plans to continue and expand the Bad Ad program efforts, including:

• development of a Web-based continuing education program,
• collaboration with medical, pharmacy, and nursing schools to enhance student education, and
• continued attendance at health care provider trade shows across the country.

More information is available in the “Bad Ad Program: 2010-2011 Year End Report” on the FDA Web site.