Jose A. Pagan Ph.D.
Director of the Center for Health Innovation
Professor in the Department of Population Health Science and Policy
The New York Academy of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital
Email: jpagan@nyam.org
Discipline: Economics
Investigator Award 
Direct-to-Consumer Advertising: Do Television Pharmaceutical Ads Prompt More Than Just Prescription Requests?Award Year: 2006 Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs, permitted only in the United States and New Zealand, has been shown to influence patients' requests for prescriptions from their doctors and to contribute to increased drug utilization and spending. Although the pharmaceutical industry now spends billions each year on this highly controversial form of advertising, little is known about how it actually affects consumer health behaviors and whether those effects are positive, negative or mixed. Co-investigators Dominick L. Frosch, Ph.D. and Jose A. Pagan, Ph.D. explore these questions in their project on Direct-to-Consumer Advertising: Do Television Pharmaceutical Ads Prompt More Than Just Prescription Requests? They also analyze whether television ads affect uninsured consumers differently than insured consumers, who have greater access to physicians and fewer concerns about the costs of medical care. Their study should help policymakers understand how advertising affects consumer health behaviors and inform the debate about whether more regulation of advertising is warranted.
Background 
Jose A. Pagan is the director of the Center for Health Innovation at The New York Academy of Medicine and a professor in the Department of Population Health Science and Policy at Mount Sinai Hospital. Dr. Pagan isalso an adjunct senior fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and research associate of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously, he was a professor and the chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy at University of North Texas Health Science Center's School of Public Health. He received B.S. and M.A. degrees in mathematics and economics from Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of New Mexico. His research interests include the population health consequences and community effects of uninsurance, the impact of health status on employment, and the economics of health insurance coverage and access to health care. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Mexico, a consultant for the World Bank and the Inter American Conference on Social Security, and a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. He is on the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative.
- Frosch, D.L., May, S., Thietbohl, C., Pagn, J.A. Living in the 'Land of No'? Consumer Perceptions of Healthy Lifestyle Portrayals in Direct-to-Consumer Advertisements of Prescription Drugs. Social Science and Medicine, 2011, 73: 995-1002.
- Grenard, J.L., Uy, V., Pagn, J.A., Frosch, D.L. Seniors' Perceptions of Prescription Drug Advertisements: A Pilot Study of the Potential Impact on Informed Decision Making. Patient Education and Counseling, 2011, 85: 79-84.