, last Monday, launched an educational, unbranded Web site designed to give legitimate drug safety information to patients and professionals. Located at 

, the site is teeming with videos, step-by-step instructional pieces about talking with physicians, and contact information for reporting adverse reactions. 

According to Pfizer, the site was established in direct response to the 35 percent of patients who choose not to take their medication due to fear of adverse reactions, and the 27 percent who chose to not fill a prescription for fear of a potential side effect (as cited by Harris Interactive Polls). 

“We’ve known for several years now that there’s a lot of misunderstanding about how safety works in the industry,” said D

ennis Manion, senior director of communications, safety and risk manager at Pfizer.

 “This is a misperception problem that leads to a health outcome that is bad.”

Pfizer decided that this was an opportunity to bridge a gap between patients and the system, and wanted to compile all the information in one place that would be easy to find and read. The site is clean in design, but full of many multimedia tools including, animated graphics to help explain how people visualize risk and video hosts help visitors wade through the different terminology. 

“We knew that we could make the site with a few graphics and some text, or we could do it really well and make it as accessible to as many audiences as possible,” Manion said in an interview with 

 “We opted to go with the graphic heavy, interactive mode so that the educational experience would be more valuable.” 

The team behind the site is now working with the 

 to adapt NPSF’s “Ask Me Three,” campaign for the Pfizer site. In a few weeks, a new section on the safety site will list three questions that patients can ask their doctors about drug safety. 

With most patients and consumers trolling the Internet and searching for health and disease state information (rather than branded drug names), the Pfizer site gives people a legitimate location for information that isn’t a health blog. Manion said that this was one of the reasons Pfizer built the site. But the primary motivation was to make sure that the audience receives unfiltered messages, free of commercial associations. 

“Clearly, Pfizer is a for-profit company that makes drugs, and we hope doctors prescribe [our drugs], but the lack of information is so great that there is a public health need that we have to fill,” Manion said. “Down the road, if patients are more educated and are having more informed discussions with their doctors, we hope we will be one of the beneficiaries of that. And if one of our competitors are-so be it.” 

Articles

News Analysis

In an effort to give healthcare professionals and patients a one-stop source for factual drug safety information and treatment options, Pfizer has launched a handy new medicine safety Web site with a bevy of bells and whistles.

Pfizer Pushes 'Safety First' on Educational Health Site

Consumers pondering whether a drug ad they came across in the latest issue of their favorite magazine crosses any legal or regulatory boundaries now have somewhere to turn for answers. Last week, 

 dedicated to educating consumers about appropriate consumer advertising.

“Be Smart About Prescription Drug Advertising: A Guide for Consumers”

 offers side-by-side comparisons of different types of DTC ads, frequently asked questions, and definitions of terminology used in consumer marketing. The agency was approached by online marketing troupe 

 in 2001 to help build the site, but it took a green light from 

Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director Janet Woodcock, 

and a half decade of designing and planning, to get the site up and running.  

“It’s one of these hybrid sites because parts of it are geared toward consumers, and parts of it are geared toward industry,” said 

Nancy Ostrove, senior advisor for risk communications, FDA.

 “We tried to get it at a level that reasonably educated consumers could understand.”

The site contains fake examples of correct and incorrect ads to demonstrate the kinds of ads that are permissible and those that are not permissible in prescription drug advertising. Another page lists questions patients should ask themselves if they see a drug ad that might have a medication of interest to them.

Ostrove said that one thing the Web site would not be is a place to lambaste pharma companies that have been caught with inappropriate ads. “We are not trying to punish industry,” she told 

 on Monday. “The purpose is to educate public, so that when someone looks at an ad, they can tell the difference between whether it is a reminder ad versus an ad that tells you what a product does, or whether it is a health information ad.”

FDA intends to expand the site to include examples of broadcast ads, as well as more interactive features such as quizzes and surveys. “There is more that can be done,” Ostrove said. “There are a lot of straits to be navigated because everything we put up must be 508 compliant, such as Flash video-that’s problematic.”

Ostrove made it clear that this site has nothing to do with the 

 being done using mock ads to gather information about how people view ads and risk/benefit information. That study will also use fake advertising to reach the end goal, but it will be more of a fact-finding mission rather than an educational program.

The big question, however, is whether or not the regular consumer really needs a Web site like this or whether it will give DTC opponents another thing to complain about.

“The site was created as an answer to customer complaints for more DTC information,” Ostrove said. “There are going to be people out there that think DTC advertising is bad, and that we should ban it. But the people we are trying to reach are those that are confused about what they are seeing and are willing to look for the information that will get them out of that area of confusion.”

A new FDA Web site defines consumer print advertising so the general public can spot bad and good pharma ads. As a bonus, the site also serves as a checklist for pharma marketers trying not to step on any regulatory toes.

Pharmaceutical Executive-09-24-2008

Pfizer Pushes 'Safety First' on Educational Health Site

FDA Launches Online DTC Primer for Consumers