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# Disease Awareness Ads Can Confuse: FDA Study
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/disease-awareness-ads-can-confuse-fda-study/
- Published: 2024-03-19T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-14T14:25:50.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: FDA Policy/General, #legacy-id-D5156581

CDER Office of Prescription Drug Promotion and Fors Marsh researchers say two fictitious television disease awareness and prescription drug promotional communications demonstrated that consumers might be confused about a drug’s benefits and risks. Writing in *Health Communication*, the researchers [say](https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2024.2323839?ref=fdaweb.com) (purchase required) consumers “may incorrectly equate the broadly described symptoms and negative consequences of the disease with outcomes addressed by the drug. This misattribution is problematic because it results in confusion about the drug’s characteristics. To date, these undesirable outcomes have been observed in studies of both prescription drug print promotion and Web links.”

The researchers conclude that conflation of product benefits and risks occurred in TV presentations when participants were exposed to both a disease awareness ad and a product ad, regardless of the similarity or proximity to the ads. Greater conflation of benefits occurred, they say, when the disease awareness and product ads appeared in closer proximity.

“Based on these results,” the study says, “temporally proximate and perceptually similar promotional communications and disease awareness communications are more likely to result in consumers conflating information in the two communications. Nonetheless, even absent temporal proximity and perceptual similarity, some degree of conflation is likely to occur, suggesting that pharmaceutical sponsors could consider these variables when developing product and disease awareness campaigns.”