AMSA's PharmFree Week Activities for Medical Students
This will give you a number of ideas for planning your PharmFree event. Depending on your chapter's resources and enthusiasm, you may choose only to focus on a single project, or you may want to organize several projects to involve your entire medical community. Please feel free to use the PharmFree Coordinator - we are here to help coordinate your activities!
This project list is just to get you started. We have taken the time to select a number of ideas that would be appropriate for all levels of medical students. We hope that through good planning, you can reach out to those upper class AMSA members that you may have lost touch with since they began their clerkships. PharmFree Week could be a great way to connect with your 3rd & 4th year members!
EDUCATION EVENTS
The PharmFree PowerPoint Presentations
AMSA's ready-made powerpoints will help you educate your fellow students about the Pharmaceutical Industry, its marketing practices, and how you can get unbiased drug information.
- PharmFree Campaign: Revitalizing Professionalism (114KB)
- Revitalizing Professionalism. AMSA’s PharmFree Initiative (555KB)
- How to Plan a Lunch Lecture (Word Document)
Pharmaceutical Issue Forum
This is a great way to introduce the issue! Hold this issue forum with a dozen or more interested participants and become experts on the Pharmaceutical Industry. You can even hold this forum days or weeks before PharmFree Day to get people excited about your events.
Host a Debate
Find two practicing physicians with opposing views on Pharmaceutical gifts and moderate an ethics debate.
Start a PR Campaign
Get together with some classmates and hang catchy posters or pass out flyers to your classmates.
Hold an Ethics Discussion
Choose one of the sponsored articles and distribute it to your classmates. Offer to hold an informal discussion group for students wanting to discuss the article.
- "Does that One Slice of Pizza Matter?" - An overview of the literature on the effect of promotions to physicians on patient care. Contains references (PDF)
- The ethics of pharmaceutical industry relationships with medical students
- Characteristics of general practitioners who frequently see drug industry representatives: national cross sectional study - a study elucidating the changes in prescribing practices.
- Will Lower Drug Prices Jeopardize Drug Research? A Policy Fact Sheet
- Impact of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising on Prescription Drug Spending
ACTION EVENTS
Recycle Those Journal Ads
Collect all of the ads from a single journal from the last six months from all of your classmates, and send them back to the Editors on December 8 with a statement asking them to limit biased advertising in their journal. Here are sample letters to the Editors of:
Pen Amnesty/Paraphernalia Purge
This one's easy! Have everyone look through their bags, white coats, and lockers. Collect all of the Pharm paraphernalia in exchange for PharmFree Pens. Similarly, you can download the AMSA "PharmFree Liberated" sticker template and print them out on labels from your local office supply store to cover up pharm logos on pens.
- Order Pens
- "Pharm Free Liberated" sticker design (Avery-5160, 1" x 2 5/8")
B&W or Color (large file)
Liberate Your Hospital or Clinic
Prepare a team of 3-5 students. Go through your hospital or clinic floor-by-floor looking for Pharm logos on pens, instruments, gadgets, and notepads. Don't forget to check nursing stations, lounges for residents & physicians, conference rooms, and libraries (don't enter patients' rooms!). Use the "PharmFree Liberated" sticker labels to cover all of the pharm logos you find. Replace pens with PharmFree pens. For every area that you liberate, leave a Liberation postcard.