#eHealthPromotion, #SaluteSocial

Lori Wallace is dying of breast cancer. As Wallace's cancer has progressed over the past seven years, she has become more critical of what she sees as excessive positivity in health care marketing. It's everywhere: TV ads, radio commercials, billboards. The advertisements feature happy, healed patients and tell stories of miraculous recoveries. The messages are optimistic, about people beating steep odds. Wallace says the ads spread false hope, and for a patient like her, they are a slap in the face.

 

A couple of decades ago, hospitals and clinics did not advertise much to customers. Now, they are spending more and more each year on marketing, according to university professors who study advertising, and are keeping track.

 

Wallace pulls up an ad on her computer from UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, in San Francisco. An announcer intones, "Amid a thousand maybes and a million nos, we believe in the profound and unstoppable power of yes."

 

There is a similar kind of optimism at the heart of a lot of the ad campaigns by health care providers — with slogans like "Thrive" and "Smile Out." Wallace says the subtext of the ads is that people like her — who get sick and will die — maybe just aren't being positive enough.

 

Karuna Jaggar is executive director of Breast Cancer Action. She says health care providers are following in the footsteps of other companies.

 

"It's the basics of marketing," Jaggar says. "In order to sell products or services, you have to sell hope."

 

She says health care advertisers are adopting the kind of optimistic messaging that really began in force with the pink ribbons and rosy depictions of breast cancer.

 

The hospital ads Wallace is objecting to tug at emotions, just like other advertising that is trying to win over consumers. With increasing health care costs and choices, patients are shopping around for care. Tim Calkins is a professor of marketing at Northwestern University. These days, he says, hospitals have to sell themselves.

 

Hospitals are spending more than ever on advertising, he says, and, as with other products, that advertising is filled with lots of promises. He says you don't see the same promises in the pharmaceutical industry. Their ads are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, which is why they have to list all those side effects and show scientific backing for their claims.

 

"Hospitals aren't held to any of those [FDA] standards at all," Calkins says. "So a hospital can go out and say, 'This is where miracles happen. And here's Joe. Joe was about to die. And now Joe is going to live forever.' "

 

Lori Wallace is not going to live forever. Before cancer, she says, she would have been attracted to the messages of hope. But now, she says, she needs realism — acceptance of both the world's beauty and its harshness. She wrote an essay about that for the women in her breast cancer support group.

 

The essay is titled "F*** Silver Linings and Pink Ribbons." Wallace reads me the whole piece from start to finish. We are sitting at her kitchen table. Her son is nearby with his pet snake.

 

Toward the middle of the essay, Wallace writes, "My ovaries are gone, and without them my skin is aging at hyperspeed. I have hot flashes and cold flashes. My bones ache. My libido is shot and my vagina is a desert."

 

"That's what I wrote," Wallace says. "That's what I wrote. Brutal honesty."

 

Further Reading:

• “Keytruda Ads Promise a Lot That's Not on the Label”; http://sco.lt/5QjO4H
• “Ads for ‘Breakthrough’ Cancer Drugs Are ‘An Ocean of Hype,’ Say Oncologists”; http://sco.lt/5NIzOD
• “Only Half of New Cancer Therapies Help Patients Live Longer”; http://sco.lt/6UdyTZ

Via Pharma Guy

The oncology landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by new science bringing treatment options for an expanded number of patients and redefining cancer as a large number of narrowly defined diseases. Most health systems are struggling to adapt and embrace this evolution, in particular the regulatory systems, diagnostic and treatment infrastructure, and financing mechanisms that are required to meet the needs of populations.

Over the past five years, 70 new oncology treatments have been launched and are being used to treat over 20 different tumor types. However, most of these drugs are not yet available in most countries, and even when they are registered, they may not be reimbursed.

The total cost of cancer therapeutics and medicines used in supportive care – measured at the ex-manufacturer price level before the application of rebates or other price concessions – reached $107 billion in 2015, representing an increase in constant dollars of 11.5% over the prior year. Not surprisingly, payers are seeking assurance of the value that result from their expenditure on these drugs and the associated services required for their appropriate use. This tension can be expected to be amplified over the next five years as a strong pipeline of clinically distinctive therapies reaches a growing number of patients around the world.

Over Twenty Tumor Types Are Being Treated With New Medicines That Have Been Launched in The Past Five Years

Over 586 molecules are in clinical development, up 63% over the past 10 years, with targeted agents making up 87% of the current pipeline.

A diverse set of over 500 companies are actively engaged in late phase oncology R&D, including most leading global companies and many newcomers.

Via Pharma Guy