Now in New York, there is a new kind of detailer: people like Ms. Franklin, who are part of a campaign by the city to use pharmaceutical industry marketing savvy to spread the word about healthy practices to doctors in neighborhoods where patients often have the least access to the latest news in health care.
During the last month, the city has sent detailers to doctors’ offices in the South Bronx, Harlem and north and central Brooklyn to tutor doctors and their staff in spotting signs of domestic violence and coaxing women (and men) to seek help. In the last 10 months, the city has spent nearly $900,000 on half a dozen detailing campaigns, including ones about influenza and pneumococcal vaccine distribution and education, colon and rectal cancer screening and smoking cessation.
Some agency workers have gone to stores to tell merchants about the penalties for selling cigarettes to minors.
“We use the health department brand to market a product line of lifesaving initiatives to doctors,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner. If pharmaceutical companies are spending billions of dollars on detailing, he said, “it must work.”
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