[Pharm-policy] JAMA: Assessing Faculty Financial Relationships With Industry: A Case Study

[James Love]

http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/current/abs/joc01033.html

Assessing Faculty Financial Relationships With Industry

A Case Study

   Elizabeth A. Boyd, PhD; Lisa A. Bero, PhD

Context A growing number of academic researchers receive industry
funding for clinical and basic research, but little is known about the
personal financial relationships of researchers with their industry
sponsors.

Objectives To assess the extent to which faculty researchers have
personal financial relationships with the sponsors of their research,
the nature of those financial relationships, and efforts made at the
institutional level to address disclosed financial relationships and
perceived conflicts of interest.

Design and Setting Case study of the University of California, San
Francisco (UCSF). Data sources included disclosure forms and official
documents maintained by the UCSF Office of Research Administration from
December 1980 to October 1999, including decisions made by the UCSF
Chancellor's Advisory Panel on Relations with Industry.

Main Outcome Measures Number and types of personal financial
relationships with external sponsors (positive financial disclosures
from all clinical, basic, or social science faculty who were principal
investigators), amount of annual income received from sponsors, and
decisions and management strategies used by the advisory panel.

Results By 1999, almost 7.6% of faculty investigators reported personal
financial ties with sponsors of their research. Throughout the study
period, 34% of disclosed relationships involved paid speaking
engagements (range, $250-$20,000 per year), 33% involved consulting
agreements between researcher and sponsor (range, <$1000-$120,000 per
year), and 32% involved the investigator holding a position on a
scientific advisory board or board of directors. Fourteen percent
involved equity ownership, and 12% involved multiple relationships. The
advisory panel recommended managing perceived conflicts of interest in
26% of the cases, including recommending the sale of stock, refusing
additional payment for talks, resigning from a management position, or
naming a new principal investigator for a project.

Conclusions Faculty researchers are increasingly involved in financial
relationships with their research sponsors. Guidelines for what
constitutes a conflict and how the conflict should be managed are needed
if researchers are to have consistent standards of behavior among
institutions.

JAMA. 2000;284:2209-2214


Author/Article Information

Author Affiliations: Center for Health Care Evaluation, Health Services
Research and Development Program, Department of Veterans Affairs, Palo
Alto, Calif (Dr Boyd); Institute for Health Policy Studies, School of
Medicine (Drs Boyd and Bero), and Department of Clinical Pharmacy,
School of Pharmacy (Dr Bero), University of California, San Francisco.
Dr Bero serves as chair of the Chancellor's Advisory Panel on Relations
with Industry at the University of California, San Francisco, from
September 1999 to present.

Corresponding Author and Reprints: Lisa A. Bero, PhD, Department of
Clinical Pharmacy and Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of
California, San Francisco, 3333 California St, Suite 265, San Francisco,
CA 94143-0936 (e-mail: bero@medicine.ucsf.edu).

Author Contributions: Drs Boyd and Bero shared equally in the design,
data analysis, and writing portions of this study. Both authors approved
the final version and take public responsibility for the content of the
article.

Funding/Support: This study was funded by grants from the
Industry-University Cooperative Research Program (P98-09); Office of the
President, University of California, Oakland; and the Office of the Vice
Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University of California, San
Francisco.

Acknowledgment: We are deeply grateful to Barbara Flynn, administrator,
Conflict of Interest Policies, Office of Research Administration,
University of California, San Francisco, for her support of and
assistance with data collection and analysis during this project. We are
also grateful to John Klimeck, administrator, and Deanna McHugh,
programmer/analyst, Office of Contracts and Grants, Office of Research
Administration, University of California, San Francisco, for their
assistance with data collection. We appreciate the many helpful comments
from the members of the Writing Seminar at the Institute for Health
Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco, on an early
draft of the manuscript.