The growth in direct-to-consumer advertising(DTCA)over the past two decades has facilitated the communication of prescription drug information directly to consumers. Data from a 1999 national survey are employed to determine the factors influencing consumers' opinions of the utility of DTC ads for health care decision making. We also analyze whether consumers use DTC ad information in health ca...

The direct-to-consumer (DTC) medical industry (i.e., medical testing and treatment outside of physician oversight) is growing rapidly as the Internet becomes more accessible globally. As several studies have highlighted, this industry offers unproven medical testing, provides testing for unapproved indications, and uses suspect advertising claims (1–5 ). Furthermore, given the prevalence of ill...

There is growing international concern about the risks posed by direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription pharmaceuticals, including via the internet. Recent trade agreements negotiated by the United States, however, incorporate provisions that may constrain national regulation of DTCA. Some provisions explicitly mention DTCA; others enable foreign investors to seek compensation if ...

The debate over direct-to-consumer (DTC) screening companies intensi ed recently as Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization, sent letters to 20 hospitals on June 19, 2014, urging their leadership to sever business relationships with HealthFair, a prominent DTC screening company. Public Citizen states that HealthFair’s “heavily promoted, community-wide cardiovascular health screening pr...

Since a 1997 regulatory shift on the part of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), there has been an explosion of televised direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising in the United States. The introduction and growth of this form of advertising, as well as other recent evolutions in the health care arena, have altered relationships among key countervailing powers in the health car...

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I N THIS ISSUE OF ARCHIVES, ILLES ET AL 1 PRESENT a descriptive study of the content of a sample of direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing publications, and the findings are disturbing. Their study of 40 newspaper advertisements and 20 brochures from a variety of national and regional sources found that the DTC marketing for the industry of screening computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance ...

Types of Advertisements There are currently several types of DTC drug advertisements (Table 1).5,11 One type is the “help-seeking ad,” which provides only information about a medical condition and encourages patients to contact their physician but doesn’t mention a product.5,11 Another category is the “reminder ad,” which includes the product name; this type may provide information about streng...