Health care professionals can play a key role in educating patients about medication health fraud.
Key Points to Know When Educating Patients about Medication Health Fraud
- Medication health fraud refers to false or misleading claims about products’ ability to treat health issues, diseases or conditions.
- Many fraudulent products that make false, unproven or misleading claims could be contaminated with hidden ingredients. These hidden ingredients are often prescription drug ingredients, banned substances and/or harmful chemicals.
- Contaminated products can interact with other medicines that your patients are taking and/or can cause severe or life-threatening side effects.
- Fraudulent and/or contaminated products are sold online and in convenience stores and gas stations.
The Common Questions about Medication Health Fraud page and the Medication Health Fraud Notifications page provide more details about medication health fraud, as well as examples of contaminated products.
Talk to Your Patients
You can help address this critical public health issue by talking to and educating patients about medication health fraud. FDA has compiled a conversation guide for discussing this important issue with your patients.
Search for Unsafe Products
You and your patients can search for fraudulent products through FDA’s health fraud product database.
Unfortunately, this list covers only a small fraction of the fraudulent products on the market, so the absence of a product from the list does not guarantee its safety.
Report an Unsafe Product
Please report any adverse events (i.e., reactions or side effects) to FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting Program to protect others from using unsafe products.
Stay in the Know
Subscribe to FDA’s email listserv to stay up to date on medication health fraud.
