The trade group for compounding pharmacies has called on a Boston PR firm for crisis support as a compounding center in Massachusetts is the focus of a national meningitis outbreak.
Ball Consulting Group, the firm of former VP of communications for the Massachusetts Hospital Association, David Ball, is working with the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists. The 2,700-member trade group, based in Houston, is working to educate media, lawmakers and regulators, as well as the public about pharmacy compounding and reassure those stakeholders about the safety of the industry.
Ball is advising the group and serving as a spokesman. "What’s alleged (at the Massachusetts facility) is very different from what compounders do every day,” he told the Columbus Dispatch Oct. 21.
More than 280 people have contracted meningitis and 23 died in an outbreak traced to a drug made by the New England Compounding Center, based in Framingham, Mass. That manufacturer has been shut down amid an investigation. Boston-based O’Neill & Associates is working the PR front for the center.