28 January 2011

Health professionals are reminded that Be Medicinewise Week launches this Sunday 30 January, and doctors, pharmacists, nurses, dentists and allied health professionals all have a role to play.

Be Medicinewise Week is being run by NPS as part of its broader Be Medicinewise campaign, which aims to get Australians thinking more about their medicines through posing the question ‘why?’.

Advertisements will air for the first time on Channel 7 during Sunday’s Sunrise program and run all day including during the Australian Open men’s tennis singles finals. Ads and editorial content have also been arranged for regional television, Pacific magazines, Fairfax radio network (2UE, 3AW etc), Yahoo, SBS television and News Limited’s Body & Soul pullout. In addition, long-term partnerships are being negotiated with SBS radio, Playgroup Australia, Kid’s Spot, Sporting Pulse, HCF and Healthways.

NPS clinical adviser Dr Danielle Stowasser says health professionals will play a vital role in the success of the campaign.

“Most people value their health professionals’ opinions when it comes to making medicines decisions, so you are key to helping them become medicinewise. You can do this through educating people about the active ingredient in their medicines and promoting the use of medicines lists, which can be downloaded at no cost from our website,” Dr Stowasser said.

“We are also trying to get the term ‘medicinewise’ into the Australian vernacular. In a similar way to how everyone knows what it means to be ‘green’, we want people to know how to be medicinewise, why it’s important and apply it to their medicines decisions.”

Being medicinewise involves:

• Knowing what a medicine is
  
• Finding the active ingredient
• Asking the right questions of trusted information sources

Throughout Be Medicinewise Week, NPS will be releasing new research, resources and tips to help consumers be medicinewise.

Over the next four months the campaign will address what it means to be medicinewise and why it’s important, followed by more specific messages about managing pain and generic medicines. The concept of being medicinewise will be used as an umbrella idea to illustrate all future health and medicine topics NPS covers.

For further information visit www.nps.org.au/be_medicinewise

ENDS

Independent, evidence-based and not-for-profit,NPS enables better decisions about medicines and medical tests.We are funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.