Every year the health care and pharmaceutical industry (HPI) spends billions of dollars on its association with the medical profession including professional colleges. The College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) has a long history of receiving a portion of this money through various activities such as journal advertising in Canadian Family Physician, unrestricted educational grants for the sponsorship of continuing professional development programs, and funding of annual Chapter or national College awards.
The CFPC appointed a task force in 2010 to evaluate the ability of the HPI to influence family physicians through this funding of College activities. As Dr Lemire states in her article in the April 2014 issue of Canadian Family Physician, the College requested this evaluation with the intent of maintaining the “trust of its members, their patients, and the Canadian public.”1 The recommendations from the task force were highlighted and approved at the College’s November 2013 board meeting. At this meeting the board requested an analysis of complete dissociation from the HPI. These results were to be presented 1 year later at the November 2014 board meeting but have still not been made public.
Complete dissociation is no longer unusual in North America: the University of Michigan, the Oregon Academy of Family Physicians, the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital have halted all continuing professional development funding by the HPI.
Although no Canadian organizations have implemented complete dissociation, some provincial College Chapters are considering HPI-free annual scientific assemblies (according to Dr Lemire’s article).1 The public release of this analysis by the CFPC could help to guide these Chapters, as well as other Canadian organizations.
Therefore, with the goal of adding to our understanding of this complex issue, and with our College’s goal of maintaining trust, we ask that the College publicly release the analysis of complete dissociation from the HPI.
Footnotes
Competing interests
None declared
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Reference
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