HCA launches media relations best practice guide
pharmafile | June 5, 2007 | News story | Medical Communications |Â Â Â
The Healthcare Communications Association has unveiled a new guide to working with the media, the first in a series of guides aimed at improving communications standards.
It is the latest move by the industry to improve its reputation and shed criticisms that came to a head with the Health Select Committee's disparaging 2005 report into pharma's influence.
In its wake the HCA set up a standards sub-committee to examine the issue and it produced the new media relations guide.
Chair of the sub-committee and head of UK Corporate Affairs for GSK's pharmaceuticals business Neil McCrae said: "As the pharmaceutical industry has come under increased scrutiny in recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the need to establish a benchmark for good practice in healthcare communications.
"With the launch of the HCA Good Practice Guide we have made an important step towards providing practical and up-to-date advice for members of the HCA."
The online Good Practice Guide on Working with the Media has been designed as a point of reference for HCA members and pulls together sections of relevant codes from the UK and Europe, while providing specific HCA recommendations on the implications for various different types of media-related activities.
It also provides links to relevant rulings by the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority, which oversees and administers the ABPI's Code of Practice.
Another influence on the production of the new guide was the 2006 overhaul of the ABPI's Code of Practice, itself widely seen as a response to the Health Select Committee's report.
ABPI President Nigel Brooksby welcomed the HCAs initiative. "The online Good Practice Guide is a flexible and user-friendly tool which will serve to support and protect the reputation of the pharmaceutical industry and help to maintain confidence in industry self-regulation," he said.
HCA chair and principal at StepBack Healthcare Julia Cook said the HCA had taken the ABPI's Code of Practice and the 2006 revisions to it as their starting point, looking at how communications fitted in it.
"But of course the code was originally intended as an advertising code and communications was just sort of added on.
"So it became very apparent that there were lots of very grey areas for communications in the code and that practices and standards varied from company to company."
Media relations was the most problematic area for HCA members, particularly in terms of working with freelancers, throwing up questions like 'can they can be taken abroad?' and 'should agencies see their copy before it's published?'
Later this year the association will run training workshops on the guide. There are plans for a new evaluation toolkit and it is also working on tackling candidate shortages in communications recruitment.
Another area the Health Select Committee put under the microscope was the way pharma interacts with patient groups and this is likely to be the focus of the HCA's next guide.
The online media relations guide is available to HCA members
