Health Affairs

Posting date: April 28, 2004

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Health Affairs, 10.1377/hlthaff.w4.234
Copyright © 2004 by Project HOPE

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The Value Of Benefit Data In Direct-To-Consumer Drug Ads

Steven Woloshin ^1*, Lisa M. Schwartz ², H. Gilbert Welch ³

¹ Steven Woloshin is a senior research associate in the Veterans Affairs (VA) Outcomes Group, White River Junction, Vermont, and associate professor of medicine and of community and family medicine, Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, Dartmouth Medical School, in Hanover, New Hampshire.
² Lisa Schwartz is a senior research associate in the VA Outcomes Group, White River Junction, Vermont, and associate professor of medicine and of community and family medicine, Center for the Evaluative Clinical Sciences, Dartmouth Medical School, in Hanover, New Hampshire.
³ H. Gilbert Welch is codirector of the VA Outcomes Group and a professor of medicine and community and family medicine, Dartmouth Medical School.

^*Corresponding author.

Abstract

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical ads typically describe drug benefits in qualitative terms; they rarely provide data on how well the drug works. We describe an evaluation of a "prescription drug benefit box"--data from the main randomized trials on the chances of various outcomes with and without the drug. Most participants rated the information as "very important" or "important"; almost all found the data easy to understand. Perceptions of drug effectiveness were much lower for ads that incorporated the benefit box than for ads that did not. Most people we interviewed want benefit data in drug ads, can understand these data, and are influenced by them.

Key Words: Consumer Issues, Legal/Regulatory Issues, Media, Pharmaceuticals, Ethical Issues, Health Spending

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