Consumer Health

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Consumer Health

• Advertising and Marketing

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Healthy People 2010Health Communication

• Health professional-patient relations
• Individuals exposure to, search for, and use of
  health information
• Individuals adherence to clinical
  recommendations
• Construction of public health messages campaigns

• Dissemination of individual population health
  risk information
• Images of health in the mass media and the
  culture at large
• Education of consumers about how to gain access
  to health care systems
• Develop telehealth applications

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Healthy People 2010Effective Health Communication

• Accuracy
• Availability
• Balance
• Consistency
• Cultural competence

• Evidence base
• Reach
• Reliability
• Repetition
• Timeliness
• Understandability

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Issues

• Misleading Information
• Quackery and Health Fraud
• Problems with Products
• Problems with Services
• Problems with Costs
• The Need for Consumer Protection
• Intelligent Consumer Behavior

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Issue1Misleading Information

• High volume and complex
• Media influence
• Radio TV
• Magazines newspapers
• Functions
• Entertain, inform, carry advertisements and make
  money

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Issue 7Intelligent Consumer Behavior

• Seek reliable sources of information
• Maintain a healthy lifestyle
• Select practitioners with care
• Assess own health
• Active health illness management
• Use scientifically substantiated health products
  and services
• Understand costs of health and illness
• Report fraud

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Advertising Marketing

• Advertising
• The activity of attracting public attention to a
  product or business, as by paid announcements in
  the print, broadcast, or electronic media
• Marketing
• To offer for sale
• To sell

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Advertising

• Placement of announcements and persuasive
  messages in time or space
• Purchased in any of the mass media by business
  firms, nonprofit organizations, government
  agencies, and individuals who
• Seek to inform and / or persuade members of a
  particular target market or audience about their
  products, services, organizations, or ideas

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Marketing

• The process of planning and executing the
  conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution
  of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges
  that satisfy individual and organizational
  objectives

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Marketing Ethics

• American Marketing Association Code of Ethics
• Federal Trade Commission
• Avoiding the Muscle Hustle
• Pump Fiction
• US Code Chapter 36 - Cigarettes

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AMA Code of Ethics

• Participants in the marketing exchange process
  should be able to expect that
• Products and services offered are safe and fit
  for their intended uses
• Communications about offered products and
  services are not deceptive

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AMA Code of Ethics

• Avoidance of false and misleading advertising
• Rejection of high-pressure manipulations, or
  misleading sales tactics
• Avoidance of sales promotions that use deception
  or manipulation

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Marketing Ethics

• 1. (legislation definition) Standards of
  marketing decision making based on "what is
  right" and "what is wrong," and emanating from
  our religious heritage and our traditions of
  social, political, and economic freedom.
• 2. (environments definition) The use of moral
  codes, values, and standards to determine whether
  marketing actions are good or evil, right or
  wrong. Often standards are based on professional
  or association codes of ethics.

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Advertising Techniques

• Words, phrases
• Puffery
• Weasel words phrases
• Half-truths
• Power words
• AMA Code
• Do not use puffery statements or hype (i.e. we
  make the best widgets East of the Rockies), but
  do inform the reader of your status in your
  industry

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What to Look For

• Unambiguous clinical outcome
• When compared with DRUG X, DRUG Y delivers faster
  symptom relief.
• Vague clinical outcome
• DRUG X is the new, effective 20 µg pill with a
  low incidence of discontinuation due to skin
  problems.
• Emotive or immeasurable outcome
• DRUG X one of a kind or DRUG X a source of
  healing power.
• Non-clinical outcome (eg, drug plasma half-lives
  or biochemical markers)
• Using DRUG X resulted in a 30 increase in
  arterial luminal diameter in post-mortem
  dissections.

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Marketing by . . .

• Medical Professionals
• Hospitals
• Prescription drug companies
• Direct to consumer advertising
• Non-prescription drug companies

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Marketing Other Products

• Food
• Dietary supplements
• Tobacco
• Weight loss
• Youth and beauty
• Exercise and fitness

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Consumer Tips for Prescription Drugs

• Primary purpose of ad is to sell you a product
• Do not assume ad gives you full story
• Get more information
• Toll-free number
• Reference book
• Your physician

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Consumer Tips for Non-Prescription Drugs

• Ignore hype secret, special, foreign formulas,
  testimonials, miracle or wonder cure
• Get more information
• Select products by ingredients listed
• Not claims
• Choose single-ingredient products

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Regulation

• Industry Self-Regulation
• Government Regulation

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Marketing Schemes

• Multi-Level Marketing
• Amway, Mary Kay, Nu Skin, Sunrider
• 35 - 100 Kit
• Likely all make false/deceptive claims
• Telemarketing

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Group Project 1Online Interactive Brief
Screenings and Interventions

• Re-write Consumer Health Assessment questions
• Provide a reference (web preferably for each
  question)
• Short paragraph responses
• For use on SurveyMonkey
• Carlos, Neha, Ryan, Shaun, Ted
• Tailored responses
• For use on WebCT
• Corey, Jason, Otto, Summer, Nestor
• Turn in and discuss in class on Feb 9

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Group Project 2Online Interactive Brief
Screenings and Interventions

• Data collection on SurveyMonkey
• Feb 15 through Feb 29
• Each group gets at least 100 participants
• Short paragraph response group
• Carlos, Neha, Ryan, Shaun, Ted
• Tailored response group
• Corey, Jason, Nestor, Otto, Summer

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Summary

• Marketing codes of ethics
• Marketing techniques
• Consumer Tips