“Drugs don’t work in patients who don’t take them.” So said former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, MD. Back to something I wrote last week on this blog, sometimes a statement obvious on its face can be profound.

The question, of course, is: Why? Why do people take only about half of the medications that they should to help them prevent disease, recuperate from acute illness, and manage chronic conditions? Why do an estimated 125,000 people die every in the U.S. because of medication non-adherence? And what could we do with the $100 billion our country will spend in 2009 because of this problem?

There’s no shortage of research to help us answer these questions, one of the best sources being the Cochrane Collaboration review on “Interventions for enhancing medication adherence.” In fact, many information therapy (Ix) interventions have proven at least somewhat successful; Ix has been a critical component of the successful interventions below.

• Targeted information
• Timely reminders
• Self-monitoring
• Reinforcement
• Counseling

I attended a stakeholder meeting today convened by the National Consumers League regarding a proposed national medication adherence campaign. One of the big issues that arose is the degree to which a public relations campaign designed to raise consumer awareness can lead to substantial increases in medication adherence.

Although awareness certainly is an important precursor, it may be the easiest step in the pathway that takes the average consumer along the road to information consumption, then knowledge accumulation, and ultimately leading to behavior change. We know there’s a large body of research that tells us that, in order to be successful, our Ix initiatives need to “meet people where they are.” More specifically, we need to target the information to the individual’s particular moment in care and tailor it to their particular needs and circumstances.

With that in mind, the Center for Information Therapy will soon embark on a new body of work around “Ix for Rx Management.” The goal will be to summarize research — on the problem but even more so about the solutions — then stimulate innovation and diffuse best practices.

Although medication adherence is one of the top issues, we will also explore other Rx management issues to address medication safety, poly-pharmacy, and other issues. Over the next few weeks, we will roll out more details on our plans in this arena, and I urge those interested in our work to get in touch with us.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Behavior Change, Chronic Care Management, Ix for Rx Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.