The impact of the cox-2 inhibitor issue on perceptions of the pharmaceutical industry: content analysis and communication implications.

The field of risk communication has its roots in the environmental, chemical, space, and nuclear arenas. As a number of these sectors have now vastly improved their communication strategies, attention is being placed on sectors that have been more problematic as of late. Examples of such sectors, include the food industries and the pharmaceutical/health sector. This article focuses on how large, multinational pharmaceutical companies can better communicate risks by analysis of one specific case, namely, that of the Cox-2 controversy.(1) For purposes of this article, risk communication is best described as "the flow of information and risk evaluations back and forth between academic experts, regulatory practitioners, interest groups and the general public," and "big pharma" refers to the more traditional R & D-based, innovative pharmaceutical companies.