Medical Affairs and Scientific Communications Forum

Session Chair(s)

Pharma is now partnering with diverse patient advocates to develop guidance on how to co-author scientific publications that are relevant to patients and written in language they can understand. Learn how Pharma has worked with patient advocates to co-develop this internal process and what the impact has been so far in involving patients in this new way.

Scientific terminology and jargon prevent lay audiences from clearly understanding the important findings and implications of research articles. This is where plain language summaries (PLS) come into play—they succinctly translate the key messages from these articles into everyday language that a large audience—patients, patient caregivers, healthcare practitioners, and others—can easily understand. Recently, the medical publishing community has made great strides in reaching consensus on the development and publication of PLSs, with new guidance and recommendations coming from several organizations and publishers. The ongoing conversations around PLS, though, have identified several challenges that need to be resolved before PLS can truly meet their objective of making peer-reviewed research accessible to all.

Learning Objective : At the conclusion of this session, participants should be able to:

• Explain how Pharma is partnering with patients/advocate(s) to develop an internal guidance around co-authoring scientific publications
• Identify of how plain language summaries support peer reviewed literature and how they assist to understand the medical literature using lay language
• Assess the challenges associated with plain language summaries

Speaker(s)