Health campaigners need to understand the media if they are to deliver accurate and easy-to-understand health information to the public argues Dr Antoine Lemaire, President of French sexual health organisation ADIRS.
Communicating medical information to the public is not new and is constantly growing; health care professionals play an important role in this. It is their duty to deliver evidence-based and easily understandable data.
Many constraints exist such as the fragmentation of health care systems, the need to adapt and update health information and to protect the privacy of our patients.
The mediatisation of health issues leads to modified attitudes among targeted populations. For instance, the CNAM, part of the French national health care system, recently presented survey results about the French attitude after a TV campaign warning against the extensive use of antibiotics was aired at the end of 2005: 93% accepted the idea of not being prescribed antibiotics during a first medical consultation and 40% knew antibiotics only act on bacteria compared to only 30% in 2002. However, only 26% knew that antibiotics are not effective against rhinopharyngitis. While this data brings to light the importance of giving information to the patient via press campaigns, some issues remain.
Other topics such as child obesity, breast cancer, cancer of the uterus, influenza among the elderly are regularly the target of information campaigns but none of these campaigns are aimed at men.
ADIRS (Association pour le Developpement de l’Information et de la Recherche sur la Sexualite) aims to inform the French public on sexual health, its problems and related treatments. A survey on French sexual life was carried out in France in 2003; it revealed that 65% of men with erectile dysfunction said they were insufficiently informed about erectile dysfunction treatments.
With the help of a pharmaceutical company, we started a TV and radio campaign about the issues relating to erectile dysfunction. Some might have considered it as useless and purely financially motivated. But we have to keep in mind that there is a lack of information and that at least part of the public is asking for it: two surveys performed among patients with chronic diseases (diabetics and patients with chronic obstructive respiratory disease) showed that 80-90% wished to be regularly asked about their sexuality; and 65-75% thought information and support from health professionals about sexual dysfunction were insufficient.
In addition, let’s remember the launch of Viagra in 1998. Due to a lack of information from the health professionals, the media ran a misinformed campaign about the so called secondary effects of the drug. Nearly ten years later, this misleading information is still present in people’s mind and remain an obstacle to the proper care of patients.
However, these surveys still require private funding because it is easier to obtain than public funding. The fact that some of this funding comes from private companies may generate criticism regarding the legitimacy or independence of the information. It is at this level that ADIRS and other European associations active in the field of men’s health are working: to ensure that media health information campaigns truly contribute to improving men’s health.
