Researchers aimed to determine the risks and benefits of prescription drug advertising released in tandem with disease awareness programming.
The similarities and proximity between disease awareness advertising and prescription drug promotion have been found to confuse patients and disconcert their understanding of a drug’s benefits or risks. According to a study published in Health Communication, when disease awareness is intertwined with drug advertisement, individuals’ knowledge on either the disease or drug used to treat it were notably impacted, especially when viewed in print or on the web.
“Though disease awareness communications focus on the disease itself, consumers can confuse information from these communications with information they may be exposed to in prescription drug advertisements for products that treat the condition. This confusion is referred to as conflation. It can lead to misunderstanding the benefits of a drug, and consumers may mistakenly assume that the drug will address all the potential consequences of the condition mentioned in the ad,” wrote the authors.1
When viewed in proximity with each other, drug ads and disease awareness have the potential of significantly morphing the ideas an individual has regarding a specific drug they may be taking or disease they suffer from. Researchers aimed to address this conflation and measured how disease awareness and drug advertisements negatively or positively work together in educating the public.
Researchers from the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research conducted 2 experimental studies to show how the similarity, proximity, and frequency of disease awareness communication and drug advertising impacted the perceptions of adult patients with asthma. Being one of the most common diseases worldwide, researchers chose asthma to maximize the population that the study findings can be applied to.
“Over 27 million people in the U.S. have asthma. This equals about 1 in 12 people. On average, 10 people in the U.S. die from asthma each day. In 2021, 3517 people died from asthma. Nearly all of these deaths are avoidable with the right treatment and care,” wrote the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.2
For study group 1 (n=2190), individuals were assigned 1 of 3 disease awareness communication materials along with an advertisement for a fake asthma drug. Both the awareness programming and the drug advertisement were interspersed randomly across an hour-long television program.1
With study group 2 (n=1621), however, participant exposure was much more varied and interspersed throughout time, showing advertisements and disease awareness 24 hours apart in proximity or even up to a week. To assess the aimed study outcomes, participants finished a questionnaire about their advertisement or disease awareness exposures.
“Overall, the researchers found that consumers conflated the drug’s benefits and risks when they were exposed to both a disease awareness communication and drug advertisement, regardless of the similarity and proximity between the advertisements. Participants more often incorrectly attributed benefits of using the drug to treat or manage the disease (asthma) when the disease awareness communications and drug advertisements were more similar,” they continued.1
While conflation of risks or benefits varied across both study arms, the overall result was a significant amount of conflation between drug advertisements and disease awareness communication. Furthermore, researchers found that conflation of benefits was significantly higher across both groups than the impact of proximity or similarity in communication.
“In Study 1, mere exposure to disease awareness communication prompted benefit and risk conflation, but the degree of similarity or proximity did not have an effect. In Study 2, similar ads prompted greater conflation of benefits than distinct ads, and greater conflation of risks occurred with greater proximity to disease awareness and promotional communications,” wrote the authors.1
Testing various disease awareness and drug advertisement communication methods, researchers confirmed previous findings that similarity and proximity significantly impacted patients’ understanding of promotional drug or disease awareness materials. While outcomes varied and potential for risks or benefits was different between each study group, the overall misunderstanding that can arise from drug ads and disease awareness in tandem is concerning for the general public suffering from a disease as common as asthma.
“The findings demonstrate the potential for disease awareness communications to confuse consumers regarding the benefits and risks of a drug,” concluded authors of the study.1
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