Public Affairs Specialists : Making a Difference

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

(Page 3 of 3)

Reaching out to the public sometimes means staying in the office to field phone calls and answer letters and e-mail. PASs often deal with the anger, frustration, and even despair of individual consumers. But they know they make a difference. Sometimes people call to tell them so.

When he became a PAS 22 years ago, Don Aird of St. Louis got his first consumer call from a young woman who was having problems with her medication for manic depression. "Her doctor had given her a prescription and sent her home," says Aird. "The physician should have been helping her adjust the dosage for her lithium, something that could take several weeks." Relying on his training as a microbiologist and a discussion with a physician in his office, Aird was able to provide further information to the woman, who then sought the opinion of a second physician. Two months later, she called Aird to thank him "for giving me back my life."

In addition to being educators, PASs must be networkers, recruiters, trainers, and salespeople. "We invented networking and partnerships before they became popular out of a sheer sense of survival," says Isaacs, who has been a PAS for 25 years. Like other PASs, Isaacs maximizes her public outreach by developing "train the trainer" programs, participating in media events, and partnering with grassroots organizations to get information to a larger audience.

One important audience is people with HIV/AIDS. In 1989, the FDA initiated an AIDS Health Fraud Task Force Network to monitor and counter the promotion of suspected fraudulent AIDS products, such as "energized" water and "ozone therapy." The task forces, established in 21 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, have built coalitions to educate consumers through telephone hot lines, newsletters, public service announcements, exhibits, and videos.

"It involves a lot of time and work, but it's well worth it," says Isaacs, who remembers speaking at conferences where she required a guard to protect her from angry AIDS activists. Now, as a member of Florida's AIDS Health Fraud Task Force, Isaacs collaborates with the activists, the medical community, and other government organizations to develop educational materials used nationally on good nutrition, food safety, AIDS health fraud, and HIV infection. "It's one of the most rewarding groups that has ultimately reached millions of people," she says.

Long Hours, But Never Dull

To reach their many constituents, PASs often work long hours and travel many miles. Alan Bennett, a PAS for 11 years in Portland, Ore., covered three events and more than 1,700 miles in a three-day period in May 2002. On a Thursday, he attended a food safety conference in Idaho. The following day, he spoke at a meeting in Montana on bioterrorism. Saturday evening found him in Oregon playing a bacterium in Portland's famous Starlight parade. Bennett marched the entire two-mile parade route in a green, cumbersome FDA "Fight BAC" costume, much to the delight of the children in the audience. "I was covered in sweat, but I made it without lagging too far behind the other microbes," he says.

PASs Virlie Walker and Devin Koontz of Denver scramble to cover their 404,000-square-mile territory that includes four states (Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, and New Mexico) and 9 million customers. "There's never a dull moment," says Walker, a PAS veteran of 16 years. "You pray for dull moments."

Far from dull was Walker's "once-in-a-lifetime experience" as a PAS: working at the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City.

"It was a long, cold and busy month," says Walker, who worked seven days a week during the games. For a year and a half prior to the Olympics, Walker traveled to Salt Lake City monthly to prepare for her role as a public information officer representing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the FDA. During the games, she responded to health-related requests from the public and worked with the media to tell the story of the HHS Emergency Response Teams. These five-person teams of medical volunteers from 17 states were poised for action in the event of a disaster or other incident that could pose a threat to the several thousand athletes and 70,000 visitors per day.

"Every day we had four conference calls and at the end of the day we filed a situation report," says Walker. Military personnel armed with M-16's were stationed every few feet, she adds. "It was the safest place in America."

Changing Times

Fifty years ago, consumer consultants fielded questions — mostly from women — about food, nutrition, and drugs. They are still the main areas of concern today, says Leggett. "Not much goes away — we just add to it. The information and products become more technical, more complicated, and there are more gray areas."

Although the majority of callers today still are women, men increasingly are contacting PASs. "The minute FDA approved Viagra, I had more men call me in the one week that followed than in the 38 years I've worked here," says PAS Darlene Bailey of Chicago. "One man asked, 'If I take two Viagra pills instead of the one daily as recommended, will I have double the action?'" says Bailey, who recommended to the caller that he follow the instructions on the label.

"Probably the greatest change that happened in the way the job was done is in communications," says Mary-Margaret Richardson, who retired in 2000 after nearly 30 years as a PAS. Before the Internet and other sophisticated technology, it took a few days to get information out to the public. "Now, you can't hide," says Richardson. "The information needs to be immediate."

Bailey learned the importance of immediate information in 1982, when seven people died from poisoning after swallowing Tylenol that had been tampered with. "Because it involved so many agencies and FDA was the lead agency, we had to keep everyone informed by the minute and we were on the phones constantly (there were no computers at the time) with headquarters, the laboratory, media, state and local health departments, and other authorities," says Bailey. "We had meetings in our offices approximately four to five times a day and we really worked as a team to make sure everybody was speaking with one voice."

The Internet has been both a blessing and a curse in their jobs, according to today's PASs. "It makes more information accessible to the public, but with the facts they also get the frauds and the urban legends," says Bennett, who has had to assure people that bananas don't contain flesh-eating bacteria, a rumor widely circulated on the Internet. With the advent of the Internet, Bennett was worried at first that the public wouldn't need him anymore. "Now they need me as a guide to find the right information on the Web," he says. "But that's what we're all about — getting good information to the public."

About the Author

www.fda.gov
FDA is A United States government body that oversees medical devices, including contact lenses, intraocular lenses, excimer lasers and eyedrops. In the US, these products must be approved by the FDA before they can be marketed.