[Perception of the conflict of interest in people working in public health services].

Abstract

BACKGROUND\nthe employment relationship with a public health service foresees a remuneration that in many cases is the main income, it takes place within a hierarchical structure, whose top management is nominated by politics. Therefore, objectives and priorities can change according to the prevailing policy.\n\n\nOBJECTIVES\nto verify the existence of the perception of a potential conflict of interest in the employment relationship with a public health service.\n\n\nDESIGN\ndescriptive study. SETTING E PARTICIPANTS: authors of the papers published in the years 2016-2017 in Epidemiologia&Prevenzione (E&P).\n\n\nMAIN OUTCOME MEASURES\nnumbers of authors and of declarations of conflict of interest.\n\n\nRESULTS\nin the 12 issues published by E&P in the two years under review, 144 contributions, drawn up by 630 authors, were evaluated; 16% of the contributions did not have the declaration of conflict of interest; the authors declared the existence of some conflict of interest in 10 contributions (6.9%). Thirteen of the 630 authors (2.0%) declared a conflict. Two of these declarations (2/630; 0.3%) referred to their employment relationship.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThis context does not seem to foster the independence of thought: only 0.3% of the authors indicated the working relationship among their conflicts of interest. In general, the declaration of the conflict of interest involved 2% of the authors. The need to discuss the conflict of interest, its awareness and its control should be a priority action of the scientific community, scientific associations, and scientific journals.