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After debating a controversial proposal to require that minority and women psychiatrists be included in every industry-supported symposium at APA annual meetings, the Board of Trustees decided at its September meeting in Washington, D.C., to table the matter until the next time it convenes, which will be on October 23.
The idea of requiring the pharmaceutical industry organizers of these popular annual meeting sessions to include minority group and women participants originated with the Committee of Black Psychiatrists, chaired by Gloria Pitts, D.O., of Southfield, Mich. She reported that committee’s concern to the Trustees at their June meeting. At that time she noted that minority psychiatrists had proposed three industry-supported symposia this year, but all were turned down.
She noted as well that the committee was concerned that too few racial and ethnic minority group members are included in drug trials conducted by the companies that support the annual meeting sessions. This fact is troubling, she said, because research suggests that efficacy and side effects may differ among people of different ethnic backgrounds. Requiring minority participation in the symposia would send a clear message that the diversity of the patients who receive psychiatric treatment cannot be ignored in clinical trials.
Following Pitts’s report, APA President Herbert Sacks, M.D., appointed an ad hoc task force charged with studying the issues raised by the Committee of Black Psychiatrists and developing proposals for the Board to discuss at its September meeting. Named to the task force were President-elect Rodrigo Muñoz, M.D., Speaker-elect Donna Norris, M.D., immediate past president Harold Eist, M.D., and Pitts.
Reporting on behalf of the task force last month, Muñoz said that the members agreed that increased participation by minority and women psychiatrists on the industry-supported symposia was a worthy goal.
"The minorities may profit from partnerships with drug-manufacturing companies to propose culturally relevant industry-supported symposia," he said. He added that he had talked with representatives from several pharmaceutical firms that appeared receptive to the notion of adding sessions of particular relevance to minority and women psychiatrists. He suggested that the Board endorse a goal of having 15 industry-supported symposia - about one-third of the number in recent years - "directly relevant" to women and minority-group members.
Former APA president Joseph T. English, M.D., urged the Board to pass the proposal as a one-year trial. While "it is no longer politically correct to have quotas, . . .there is a tremendous backlash across the country because we are not paying special attention to the needs of minorities," he said.
Trustee-at-Large Michelle Riba, M.D., said that while she agreed with the intent of the task force’s proposal, she objected to the idea of imposing mandates on the companies that support these symposia. Riba, a former vice chair of the APA committee that organizes the annual meeting scientific program, urged her colleagues to frame the proposal in the form of guidelines urging the pharmaceutical companies to include minority and women psychiatrists and to design some of their sessions to focus on "culturally relevant" research and clinical issues. Stressing that the Scientific Program Committee is working hard to ensure maximum participation by all segments of the psychiatric community, she pointed out that for last year’s annual meeting program, two industry-supported symposia were turned down specifically because they included no women or minorities.
Incoming APA Medical Director Steven Mirin, M.D., told the Board that he and outgoing Medical Director Melvin Sabshin, M.D., had recently met with pharmaceutical company representatives and "came away with a clear sense that the symposia organizers realize that anyone with half a brain knows this is an important issue to pay attention to." This change in the composition of symposia panels will likely happen without APA legislating it, Mirin pointed out.