Release Date: July 1, 2008
Expiration Date: June 30, 2011

TARGET AUDIENCE
This course was designed for prescribers, specifically: physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners. Other clinicians, health care administrators, and lay persons may find the material beneficial and are welcome to view the modules.

PURPOSE
The purpose of this course is to raise awareness and help prescribers recognize and resist persuasion of industry marketing strategies, and to enable and encourage prescribers to seek out more balanced and less biased information for prescribing decisions.

Participants in this enduring material course should be better able to:

1. Recognize off-label promotion.
2. Discuss the risk of off-label prescribing with insufficient evidence.
3. Critically evaluate the information (both provided and omitted) in order to make optimal prescribing decisions.
4. Recognize one's own susceptibility to manipulation and potential bias.
5. Recognize other factors that impact prescribing patterns.
6. Actively seek and utilize balanced sources of drug information to improve prescribing practices.
7. Use deconstruction techniques to help understand pharmaceutical promotion and susceptibility to marketing messages.
8. Incorporate patient concerns and issues into prescribing decisions.

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETE EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY
Approximately 3 hours.

ACCREDITATION STATEMENTS
The Lovelace Clinic Foundation is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians. The Lovelace Clinic Foundation designates this educational activity for a maximum of 3.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™, Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Lovelace Clinic Foundation is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation (ANCC). This activity is designated for up to 3.0 contact hours.

FACULTY INFORMATION
The following faculty contributed content to this course and have no relationships to disclose:

• Margaret J. Gunter, PhD, President and Executive Director, Principal Investigator, Lovelace Clinic Foundation
• Eva Lydick, PhD, Former Chief Research Officer and early Principal Investigator, Lovelace Clinic Foundation
• Christie McAuley, MA, New Mexico Media Literacy Project, an outreach project of Albuquerque Academy
• William Mitchell, MD, Consultant and former Associate Medical Director, Lovelace Health Plan, former Chief Medical Officer of Lovelace Health System hospitals
• Louis Morris, PhD, Consultant, Louis A. Morris & Associates
• Richard Platt, MD, MS, Professor and Chair of the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
• April L. Salisbury, MBA, Director of Continuing Professional Education and Project Manager, Lovelace Clinic Foundation
• Steven R. Simon, MD, MPH, Associate Professor, Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care
• Robert E. White, MD, MPH, Medical Director of Clinical Informatics, Lovelace Clinic Foundation

Instructional Design and Accreditation Oversight Provided by:

• Shelley Carter, RN, MPH, MCRP, Director of Research and Educational Services, and Nurse Planner, Lovelace Clinic Foundation
• Laura Kratochvil, Multistorymedia
• Deborah LaPointe, PhD, Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center, University of New Mexico
• Virginia Printz-Feddersen, MSN, CNS, RN-BC, CNOR, Nurse Planner, Lovelace Clinic Foundation
• April L. Salisbury, MBA, Director of Continuing Professional Education, Project Manager, Lovelace Clinic Foundation

Appearing courtesy of Big Bucks, Big Pharma, produced by Media Education Foundation:

• Marcia Angell, MD, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School
• Gene Carbona, Former Merck Representative
• Bob Goodman, MD, Founder, No Free Lunch

Special Thanks To:

• Sarah J. Beaton, PhD, Senior Research Associate, Lovelace Clinic Foundation
• Pam Castaldi, MA, DigIt Media
• Jeremy Gleeson, MD, Chair of Endocrinology, Associate Medical Director, ABQ Health Partners, Consultant for video scripts
• Ruth Graham, Administrative Support to the Project, Lovelace Clinic Foundation
• Gary Gunter, Narrator, Media Consultant
• Margaret J. Gunter, Narrator
• Bruce Hammond, Actor portrayal of Max Peterson
• Twila Kunde, MPH, CCRP, Project Management Support, Lovelace Clinic Foundation
• Celestia Loeffler, Actor portrayal of Dr. Kathy Chavez
• Billie Nelson, Administrative Support to the Project, Lovelace Clinic Foundation
• Dan O'Bryan, Jr., Consultant for video scripts, former pharmaceutical representative
• Lawrence J. Pesko, MS, PhD, RPh, Pharmacy Director for Ardent Health, consultant for video scripts
• Liz Stephenson, JD, MPH, National Grants Coordinator, Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Grant Program Center for Evidence-based Policy, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland Oregon
• Steven Wenrich, Video direction and production
• The Prescribers of ABQ Health Partners — For their invaluable feedback during the live pilot of the course

To reach any of our faculty for questions or follow up, you may contact April Salisbury at Lovelace Clinic Foundation by phone at (505) 938-9925, or via e-mail message to april.salisbury@lcfresearch.org, or by mail at 2309 Renard Place SE, Suite 103, Albuquerque, NM 87106

METHOD OF PARTICIPATION
To receive a statement of credit, you must:

• Complete the pre-test.
• Review the full content of the activity.
• Successfully complete the post-test (80% or higher) and evaluation.
• You will have 3 opportunities to successfully complete the activity.

Your statement of credit will be issued immediately upon successful completion of the post-test and submission of the evaluation form.

FEE
This activity is provided at no cost to the physician through a grant to the Federation of State Medical Boards from the Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SUPPORT
These materials were made possible by a grant from the state Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program, which is funded by a multi-state settlement of consumer fraud claims regarding the marketing of the prescription drug Neurontin.

FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIP INFORMATION
Everyone who had control of the content of this course has disclosed all relevant financial relationships with any commercial interest to Lovelace Clinic Foundation (LCF), the provider of continuing education credits. LCF is occasionally awarded research and educational grant funding from industry, and estimates such funding at less than 25% of overall revenue.

OTHER DISCLOSURES
All movie clips, TV commercials, print ads and other media examples are used legally under the "Fair Use" provision of the US copyright law (U.S.C. 17, Sec. 107), which states that copyrighted materials may be used for educational purposes, commentary, and/or criticism.

This course does not make specific treatment recommendations, but encourages the use of best available evidence in medical decision making.

All faculty and planning committee members have attested that: 1) the content they contribute will promote improvements in healthcare and not any specific proprietary business interest of a commercial interest, and that 2) content for this activity will be well balanced, evidence-based, and unbiased.

All materials have been reviewed for validity and bias, and modified where necessary by the principal investigator and members of the planning committee who are free from all industry relationships.

The references contained in this educational course demonstrate the best available evidence on which conclusions were based. Your feedback about perceived bias will also be requested in the evaluation survey.

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
PC
Microsoft Windows 2000 SE or above.
Internet Explorer (v5.5 or greater), or Firefox
Adobe Acrobat Reader*

MAC
MAC OS 10.2.8
Safari
Adobe Acrobat Reader*
Internet Explorer is not supported on the Macintosh.

* Required to view printable (PDF) version of the lesson.