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Mass. mental illness group says drug companies not major donors

E-mail | Print | Comments () Posted by Gideon Gil December 2, 2009 12:01 PM

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By Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff

Fewer than 15 percent of donations made to The National Alliance on Mental Illness of Massachusetts have come from pharmaceutical companies in the past five years, the organization reported to congressional investigators.

In a letter to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, NAMI Mass president Rita Sagalyn said that a small portion of the organization's $850,000 budget comes from drug companies, and that NAMI Mass "has a firm policy that it will not accept funds from any source if requests are made on how the money will be spent."

The organization's letter last month was in response to a request from Grassley, who has sent letters to the national group, state chapters of NAMI, and about a dozen other influential disease and patient advocacy organizations asking about their ties to drug and device makers. The requests are part of his investigation into the drug industry’s influence on the practice of medicine.

The alliance has long been criticized for coordinating some of its lobbying efforts with drug makers and for pushing legislation that also benefits industry. Most of its donations in recent years have come from drug makers, according to a New York Times story on Grassley's inquiry.

A wide range of drug companies have given money to NAMI Mass, mostly to help pay for its annual fund-raising walk.

For example, pharmaceutical companies gave $47,000 in fiscal year 2009, or 5.8 percent of the organization's total budget; in fiscal year 2008, companies gave $68,549, or 10 percent of the total budget. In both those years, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca were the top industry contributors.

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White Coat Notes covers the latest from the health care industry, hospitals, doctors offices, labs, insurers, and the corridors of government. Chelsea Conaboy previously covered health care for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Write her at cconaboy@boston.com. Follow her on Twitter: @cconaboy.

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