QR Challenge: WHO - Direct Advertising article

Created using the ClassTools QR Treasure Hunt Generator

Teacher Notes

A. Prior to the lesson:

1. Arrange students into groups. Each group needs at least ONE person who has a mobile device.

2. If their phone camera doesn't automatically detect and decode QR codes, ask students to

• Download a QR reader (e.g. I-Nigma | NeoReader | Kaywa) onto their mobile devices
• Bring these devices into the lesson.

3. Print out the QR codes.

4. Cut them out and place them around your class / school.

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B. The lesson:

1. Give each group a clipboard and a piece of paper so they can write down the decoded questions and their answers to them.

2. Explain to the students that the codes are hidden around the school. Each team will get ONE point for each question they correctly decode and copy down onto their sheet, and a further TWO points if they can then provide the correct answer and write this down underneath the question.

3. Away they go! The winner is the first team to return with the most correct answers in the time available. This could be within a lesson, or during a lunchbreak, or even over several days!

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C. TIPS / OTHER IDEAS

4. A detailed case study in how to set up a successful QR Scavenger Hunt using this tool can be found here.

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Questions / Answers (teacher reference)

Question	Answer
1. The Lipitor advertisement from Pfizer relied on the audience begin unaware of what?	Robert Jarvik (the distinguished doctor) had never been a licensed as a medical doctor, could not legal prescribe and was not the inventor of the artificial heart (at least according to three former colleagues at the University of Utah). And he did not row the boat
2. When was direct to consumer advertising made legal in the United States	1985
3. Why did this form of advertising take off in 1997?	Food and Drug Administration (FDA) eased up on a rule obliging companies to offer a detailed list of side effects in their infomercials
4. What is an infomercial?	Long format television commercial
5. How much did pharmaceutical companies spend on advertising in 2008	US$5 billion
6. Who is the only other country in the world to allow direct to consumer advertising?	NZ
7. What does Ken Johnson believe direct to consumer advertising achieves?	Direct-to-consumer advertising informs patients potentially suffering from disease and raises their awareness of treatment options
8. “The truth is direct-to-consumer advertising is used to drive choice rather than inform it,” - Dr Dee Mangin, associate professor at the Christchurch School of Medicine and Health Sciences.Explain, what does this mean?	It means that the ‘driving’ is typically in the direction of expensive brand-name drugs. New Zealand consumers then go to their doctors and the pressure to prescribe begins.
9. What survey evidence justifies Dr DEE Mangin position?	Surveys carried out in New Zealand and in the USA show that when a patient asks for a specific drug by name they receive it more often than not. “In an era of shared decision-making, it’s much more likely that general practitioners will just do what the patient asks,” says Mangin
10. What arguments against direct to consumer advertising can you think of	these advertisements encourage consumers to seek out overly expensive brand-name drugs from doctors. Their symptoms might not require such medications. If their symptoms do require drugs cheaper generic drugs may be available. Such marketing probably drives up overall health-care costs. More important, new drugs that are aggressively marketed can pose a safety risk
11. Why are doctors more likely to agree with their patient when a specific drug is requested?	because doctors are also being enticed by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe their drugs.
12. Why have people identified direct to consumer advertising as an issue in the USA?	Higher cost for the consumer or tax payer. Some of the more thoughtful people in the USA recognize that part of the reason they have a drug expenditure bill that is completely out of control is this kind of advertising,” says Suzanne Hill, a scientist working on rational drug use and drug access at the World Health Organization (WHO)
13. What measures has the Pharmaceutical companies taken in response to criticisms?	Pharmaceutical industry announced that it was updating its voluntary standards for direct-to-consumer advertising. It pledged to stop using actors to play doctors, and to make sure endorsers who said they had used a particular drug had actually done so.
14. What is the issue this article is addressing?	creative marketing strategies used by pharmaceutical companies in their advertisements

 

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