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  • Industry interactions in the context of the inter-professional clinic

Industry interactions in the context of the inter-professional clinic

  • 19 Jan 2023
  • 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM
  • In-Person Event

* **THIS SEMINAR WILL TAKE PLACE IN PERSON IN THE HEALTH SCIENCES BUILDING (155 COLLEGE STREET TORONTO, ON) IN ROOM 208***

This series is co-hosted by the Centre for Global Health, Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto.

A bout This Seminar

Representatives of medically-related industry, including pharmaceutical, medical device, infant formula, food, and health technology companies, are present within healthcare settings on a day-to-day basis, providing education or clinical support. Industry expertise is generally considered necessary to inform clinicians about new developments in the field and for the safe and competent use of drugs, devices, and equipment. Companies also routinely sponsor educational events for health professionals, research, and other services and projects that are not funded through the public health system. However. most industry representatives work concurrently in a sales capacity, creating competing incentives that are not always consistent with health system or patient interests. To date, most research and policy scrutiny of relationships between health professionals and industry has focused on physicians. Studies have found that even nominal payments from drug manufacturers to physicians, including free food and beverages, are associated with increased prescribing of higher-cost, brand name drugs. Though understudied, nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, and other members of the interprofessional healthcare team also routinely interact with industry representatives including serving as ‘key opinion leaders,’ and receive industry payments for research, education, consulting, advising, and speaking for industry, much like their physician colleagues. In this interactive workshop, an interprofessional panel will describe and discuss the nature of relationships with industry within their field and participants will work through case studies to discuss strategies to ethically interact with industry in ways that are consistent with the interests of patients and the public health system.

Suggested readings

Chimonas S, Mamoor M, Zimbalist S A, Barrow B, Bach P B, Korenstein D et al. (2021). Mapping conflict of interests: scoping review. BMJ, 375, e066576 doi:10.1136/bmj-2021-066576

Grundy, Q. (2018). Infiltrating healthcare: How marketing works underground to influence nurses. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Karanges EA, Grundy Q, Bero L. (2019). Understanding the nature and extent of pharmaceutical industry payments to nonphysician clinicians. JAMA Intern Med, 179(10), 1430–1432. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.1371

Speaker Bios

Quinn Grundy is a registered nurse and Assistant Professor with the Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto and a Fellow with the WHO Collaborating Centre on Governance, Accountability, and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector. Dr. Grundy’s research explores the interactions between medically-related industry and the public health system. Dr Grundy is the author of Infiltrating Healthcare: How Marketing Works Underground to Influence Nurses (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018) which details the first in-depth study of the ways that registered nurses interact with pharmaceutical and medical device company representatives

Eric Ng is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, and the Associate Director of the MPH Nutrition & Dietetics Program in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. He is also a registered dietitian and a PhD Candidate in Policy Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. Eric has taken on various roles in community nutrition, mental health promotion, health equity, and dietetic education. His teaching and research focus on how health professionals are embedded within political systems and how we can challenge social inequities in health in our everyday practice.

Kellia Chiu is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Bridgepoint Collaboratory for Research and Innovation, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Sinai Health System. Her work involves conducting international comparative policy analyses on opioid use disorder treatments in primary care settings, and she has a particular interest in exploring how different health system, cultural, and political and institutional factors influence health policies. Her research interests include the development of policies affecting community pharmacy practice (opioid regulation, vaccinations, COVID-19 pandemic responses) and the role of evidence in policymaking, spin/hype in research, and conflict of interest disclosures by clinician-researchers. Kellia is a registered pharmacist in Australia and has clinical experience practicing in community pharmacy.



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