The UC Davis School of Medicine is one of only six medical schools in the United States that has received a grade of A on the American Medical Student Association's 2007 PharmFree Scorecard.

The scorecard, which ranks medical schools according to their pharmaceutical influence policies, is the first of its kind and provides students with new information about their medical school choices.

The PharmFree campaign encourages medical schools and academic medical centers to develop policies that limit the access of pharmaceutical company representatives to their campuses and prohibit medical students and physicians from accepting gifts of any kind from these representatives.

Reducing influence

Six universities received a grade of A, which means that the school has a comprehensive policy that restricts pharmaceutical company representatives' access to both medical school campuses and academic medical centers.

In addition to UC Davis, the other schools receiving a grade of A were the Stanford University School of Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, University of Vermont College of Medicine and the Yale University School of Medicine.

Aimed at reducing the influence of pharmaceutical marketing on physicians and other staff, the UC Davis Health System's new measures take effect July 1. They ban employees from accepting free drug samples, food, beverages, pens, notepads and other marketing items, and disallow sales representatives from serving in preceptorships at the health system.

The health system's prohibition against receiving drug samples and gifts is consistent with a policy proposal published in January 2006 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

However, the health system's policy exceeds JAMA's recommended guidelines by banning preceptorships for pharmaceutical sales representatives. Preceptorships allow sales representatives, for a fee, to accompany doctors during their patient visits, providing the opportunity for the representatives to deepen their relationships with doctors.

AMSA plans to publish a new scorecard each year as medical schools continue to re-evaluate and comprehensive pharmaceutical influence policies. The survey will include enhanced metrics and include partner involvement to reflect the growing PharmFree movement.

AMSA's 2007 PharmFree Scorecard is available as a downloadable PDF on the Web at www.amsa.org/prof/scorecard07.pdf.

David Ong is a senior public information representative for the UC Davis Health System.