How Well Do Canadian Newspapers Report the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of New Prescription Drugs?

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A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Prescription Drugs

About the authors

Carol Cole

Barbara Mintzes

James McCormack

Merrilee Hughes

Alan Cassels

Alan Cassels is a drug policy researcher affiliated with the School of Health Information Sciences at the University of Victoria. He has worked on a variety of research and evaluation studies for the past ten years focusing on the impact of provincial drug benefits policies on consumers and has specialized in examining how clinical research information and experience on drugs gets communicated to policy-makers, prescribers and consumers. Alan led the first ever evaluation of Canadian newspaper coverage of new drugs (published in April 2003 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal) and he has frequently reported on consumer issues relating to pharmaceuticals for magazines, newspapers and the CBC Radio program IDEAS. He is co-author, with Australian journalist Ray Moynihan of the book, Selling Sickness, (Greystone Books, 2005) about the role of the pharmaceutical industry in helping to create and market illness. Follow Alan on Twitter

Joel Lexchin