Policies
At its business planning retreat in May 2006, the CHEP executive prioritized minimizing the potential impact of bias and developed and endorsed these policies.
ENDORSEMENT POLICY
CHEP endorses educational materials and programs of other organizations to aid the dissemination of high quality unbiased information on hypertension. Endorsement requires the consensus of 3 members of the Executive of CHEP. Only material that is ‘100%’ consistent with CHEP recommendations both in spirit and content is eligible for endorsement. Materials that reflect the personal opinions of CHEP members or other hypertension experts in content areas that are not covered by CHEP are not endorsed and programs that contain any content that is inconsistent with a CHEP recommendation are specifically not eligible for endorsement. Review of material that is not eligible for endorsement currently occupies considerable CHEP resources.
POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST POLICY
The purpose of the Potential Conflict of Interest/Competing Interest Policy is to ensure that the deliberations and recommendations of CHEP are made in the interests of improving management of hypertension and hypertension-related disease in Canada. To reduce potential conflicts of interest CHEP takes the following steps:
- CHEP receives equal amounts of operating funds from major pharmaceutical companies and obtains significant funding from government and independent granting organizations
- CHEP has an overseeing steering committee with representatives from scientific, professional, government and non-profit organizations
- A rigid, systematic approach with rules for obtaining evidence and assessing evidence is used in developing the recommendations by the volunteer members of the Recommendations Task Force (RTF)
- All members of the RTF itemize their potential conflicts of interest in writing and these are distributed at the beginning of the annual RTF consensus meeting
- A sub-committee of the RTF consisting of experts in evidence-based medicine review all the evidence and recommendations and are the presenters at the annual RTF consensus conference. The experts on this committee explicitly do not have conflicts of interest. Recommendations that are voted against by 30% of the RTF and CHEP Executive are removed. Persons with conflicts of interest are asked to refrain from voting in areas where the Potential Conflict of Interest/Competing Interest exists.
- CHEP does not recommend pharmacotherapy in the absence of direct evidence the therapy improves patient outcomes.