Abstract
BackgroundThis study investigates the coverage of adherence to medicine by the UK and US newsprint media. Adherence to medicine is recognised as an important issue facing healthcare professionals and the newsprint media is a key source of health information, however, little is known about newspaper coverage of medication adherence.MethodsA search of the newspaper database Nexis®UK from 2004–2011 was performed. Content analysis of newspaper articles which referenced medication adherence from the twelve highest circulating UK and US daily newspapers and their Sunday equivalents was carried out. A second researcher coded a 15% sample of newspaper articles to establish the inter-rater reliability of coding.ResultsSearches of newspaper coverage of medication adherence in the UK and US yielded 181 relevant articles for each country. There was a large increase in the number of scientific articles on medication adherence in PubMed® over the study period, however, this was not reflected in the frequency of newspaper articles published on medication adherence. UK newspaper articles were significantly more likely to report the benefits of adherence (p = 0.005), whereas US newspaper articles were significantly more likely to report adherence issues in the elderly population (p = 0.004) and adherence associated with diseases of the central nervous system (p = 0.046). The most commonly reported barriers to adherence were patient factors e.g. poor memory, beliefs and age, whereas, the most commonly reported facilitators to adherence were medication factors including simplified regimens, shorter treatment duration and combination tablets. HIV/AIDS was the single most frequently cited disease (reported in 20% of newspaper articles). Poor quality reporting of medication adherence was identified in 62% of newspaper articles.ConclusionAdherence is not well covered in the newspaper media despite a significant presence in the medical literature. The mass media have the potential to help educate and shape the public’s knowledge regarding the importance of medication adherence; this potential is not being realised at present.
Highlights
This study investigates the coverage of adherence to medicine by the UK and US newsprint media
There are a number of different sources providing health information to the public including healthcare professionals, Internet, television and radio, studies show that newspapers continue to be a key source in the dissemination of health information [10]
The number of relevant newspaper articles pertaining to adherence published annually remained relatively constant over the 8 year investigation period except for an increase, notably in American newspapers, in 2006
Summary
This study investigates the coverage of adherence to medicine by the UK and US newsprint media. Adherence to medicine is recognised as an important issue facing healthcare professionals and the newsprint media is a key source of health information, little is known about newspaper coverage of medication adherence. A recent survey reported that 35.2% of adults in Great Britain had read at least one daily newspaper within the previous day [11] and as such the mass media have previously been employed in communicating health promotion messages to the public with varying degrees of success e.g. improving health services utilisation [12], immediate improvement on the uptake of HIV testing [13] and inconsistent effects on smoking cessation [14]. A number of studies have investigated a range of health issues highlighted in newspapers, for example, how medicines are portrayed in the media [8], paediatric medication safety [16], medication errors [17], the uptake of the MMR vaccination [18] and the uptake of breast cancer screening [19]
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