ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
The Drug Facts Box: Improving the communication of prescription drug information.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed.
- Alternative Presentations of Overall and Statistical Uncertainty for Adults' Understanding of the Results of a Randomized Trial of a Public Health Intervention: Parallel Web-Based Randomized Trials.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Trial
- Enhancing Patient Understanding of Medication Risks and Benefits.Arthritis care & research · 2022Trial
- Communicating about COVID-19 vaccine development and safety.PloS one · 2022Trial
- Comparison of the Effects of a Pharmaceutical Industry Decision Guide and Decision Aids on Patient Choice to Intensify Therapy in Rheumatoid Arthritis.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2017Trial
- Navigating the Prescription Drug Information System.Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · 2026Review
- Applied behavioral and decision sciences in support of US FDA's drug regulatory mission.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Informing the patient of the placebo option: an ethical necessity likely to reduce inappropriate psychotropic prescriptions?Therapeutic advances in psychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Toward Patient-Centered AI Fact Labels: Leveraging Extrinsic Trust Cues.DIS. Designing Interactive Systems (Conference) · 2025Article
- Article
- Overall survival benefits of cancer drugs in the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines, 2015-2021.BMJ global health · 2023Article
- Communicating health information with visual displays.Nature medicine · 2023Review
- Communication of anticancer drug benefits and related uncertainties to patients and clinicians: document analysis of regulated information on prescription drugs in Europe.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2023Article
- Investigating the presentation of uncertainty in an icon array: A randomized trial.PEC innovation · 2022Article
- Obamacare: A bibliometric perspective.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Risk perceptions and health behaviors as COVID-19 emerged in the United States: Results from a probability-based nationally representative sample.Journal of experimental psychology. Applied · 2021Article
- Effect of Information about COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness and Side Effects on Behavioural Intentions: Two Online Experiments.Vaccines · 2021Article
- A proposed taxonomy for population-level prescription use patterns.Journal of prescribing practice · 2021Article
- Risk Ladder, Table, or Bulleted List? Identifying Formats That Effectively Communicate Personalized Risk and Risk Reduction Information for Multiple Diseases.Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · 2021Article
- The Unintended Consequences of Adverse Event Information on Medicines' Risks and Label Content.Pharmaceutical medicine · 2020Article
- The Evolving Field of Risk Communication.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Communication about prescription drugs ought to be a paragon of public science communication. Unfortunately, it is not. Consumers see $4 billion of direct-to-consumer advertising annually, which typically fails to present data about how well drugs work. The professional label--the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) mechanism to get physicians information needed for appropriate prescribing--may also fail to present benefit data. FDA labeling guidance, in fact, suggests that industry omit benefit data for new drugs in an existing class and for drugs approved on the basis of unfamiliar outcomes (such as depression rating scales). The medical literature is also problematic: there is selective reporting of favorable trials, favorable outcomes within trials, and "spinning" unfavorable results to maximize benefit and minimize harm. In contrast, publicly available FDA reviews always include the phase 3 trial data on benefit and harm, which are the basis of drug approval. However, these reviews are practically inaccessible: lengthy, poorly organized, and weakly summarized. To improve accessibility, we developed the Drug Facts Box: a one-page summary of benefit and harm data for each indication of a drug. A series of studies--including national randomized trials--demonstrates that most consumers understand the Drug Facts Box and that it improves decision-making. Despite calls from their own Risk Communication Advisory Committee and Congress (in the Affordable Care Act) to consider implementing boxes, the FDA announced it needs at least 3-5 y more to make a decision. Given its potential public health impact, physicians and the public should not have to wait that long for better drug information.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.