Direct-to-Consumer Advertising: Do Television Pharmaceutical Ads Prompt More Than Just Prescription Requests?

Award Year: 2006	Investigator: Dominick Frosch, Jose Pagan	Budget: $283,049	Categories: Pharmaceutical Policy, Consumerism
Abstract: 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.