The Sunshine Act and medical publications: Guidance from professional medical associations

[This publication in Postgraduate Medicine was coauthored by Dikran Toroser, Lisa DeTora, Angela Cairns, Renu Juneja, Anna Georgieva, Al Weigel, and Kim Pepitone.]

The relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare professionals are valuable not only for drug development and the medical publication process, but also for eventual improvements in patient care. Furthering initiatives to increase transparency around these relationships, the US Sunshine Act (the Act) is a landmark federal-level mandate to disclose certain financial relationships between the pharmaceutical industry and US physicians holding a current license to practice. However, there are presently varying interpretations of the Sunshine Act. This Review, published in Postgraduate Medicine, explores what type of information regarding authorship and industry support has been provided to physicians by professional associations, and whether the information was consistent with other interpretations of the Sunshine Act.