Browsing by Author "Leamy, Zachary E."

This thesis examines direct-to-physician pharmaceutical marketing in the United States of America. In 2013, about 78 opioid prescriptions were being written for every 100 people, and 17,000 people in the United States died from an opioid overdose. This study asks, what is the relationship, if any, between contemporary direct-to-physician pharmaceutical marketing practices and opioid mortality in the United States? Contained within an expansive piece of U.S. federal legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is a provision which mandates pharmaceutical manufacturers to report marketing payments made to physicians, hospitals, and other relevant healthcare providers. By connecting marketing payments to mortality data at several geospatial levels, the study finds that there is a plausible relationship between the direct-to-physician pharmaceutical marketing and mortality.