Recent media reports have presented continuing medical education as being rife with bias and conflicts of interests based on “misrepresentation of facts and misinformed perceptions,” according to the American Medical Association’s National Task Force on CME/Provider Industry Collaboration. To set the record straight, the task force launched the “Get the Facts!” campaign. The idea is to make a national effort to ensure that CME advocates, stakeholders, and critics will have factual information on CME processes, regulations, and opportunities to inform their opinions, decisions, and publications.

As part of the campaign, the task force’s Public Affairs Committee has put together a series of fact sheets that it hopes will help the media, state and federal policymakers, and other regulators understand the CME enterprise. It will disseminate the fact sheets on an ongoing basis, issue press releases and hold other media-related activities, and make presentations about the fact sheet topics at major conferences and meetings.

The facts sheets available to date are
Fact Sheet 1: Continuing Medical Education: Providing Valid and Independent Evidence for Clinical Decisions,

Fact Sheet 2: Continuing Medical Education: Addressing 
Conflict of Interest (COI), 

Fact Sheet 3: Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology and Medical Device Company 
Support of Continuing Medical Education, and 

Fact Sheet 4: On-Label and Off-Label Usage of 
Prescription Medicines and Devices, and the Relationship to CME.

In its Get the Facts Toolkit, the task force suggests the sheets can be disseminated by posting them on company/institution/association Web sites, through a call-to-action campaign to employees and/or association members, by incorporating them into presentations and publications, and by including them in handouts to physician audiences. It also suggests sending them to local media and government officials, incorporating them into employee training manuals, and sharing them with CME planning committees and faculty.

Topics of upcoming fact sheets include pharmaceutical, biotech, and device company (industry) support of CME; FDA‐regulated promotional activities; and the value of collaboration.

For more information, e-mail NTF.FactSheets@ama‐assn.org.

Related Articles:
Are the Accusations that CME Is Biased Toward Pharma Valid?

Bias? What Bias?

Report from the 2009 National Task Force Conference