A rich history with global impact

Showing real-world impact through policy documents and clinical guidelines citations

At BMJ Group, we focus on making a real-world impact through our publications. While scholarly influence is significant, we can see its value in real-world implications for policy and clinical guidelines and how it drives health and social care change.

According to credible data provided by BMJ Impact Analytics, in 2023, research papers published by BMJ Group were cited in over 7000 policy documents and clinical guidelines, directly improving clinical practice and how health and social care is provided.

This places us among the top ten most influential publishers on health and social care policy, outperforming many larger publishers in terms of our real-world impact.

The UK government has officially announced the mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid, a transformative policy to prevent neural tube defects (NTDs) in newborns. This decision comes after years of advocacy and mounting scientific evidence supporting the measure as a cost-effective way to improve public health.

Experts like Professor Sir Nicholas Wald have been advocating for this policy. In a June 2024 opinion piece published in The BMJ, Wald argued that fully effective fortification could prevent up to 80% of NTDs, compared to the current approach of relying on individual supplementation, which reaches far fewer people.

This government announcement reflects the recommendations of numerous health experts and organisations, including the scientific consensus on the safety and efficacy of fortification.

Nearly 90% of teens and young adults who use social media say they use it to find information about their healthcare. However, as pharmaceutical marketers have shifted more and more of their budgets towards selling their products on social media, especially via paid influencers, the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulation has lagged behind.

A new landmark legislation, The Protecting Patients from Deceptive Drug Ads Online Act, introduced by Senators Durbin (D-IL) and Braun (R-IN), directs the FDA to update and enforce its regulations for promoting prescription drugs on social media. It does this by focusing the agency’s attention specifically on deceptive or misleading communications by telehealth companies, social media influencers, and health providers.

This act is a direct result of the work of Generation Patient, led by its founder and BMJ patient advisor, Sneha Dave. This legislation was particularly noteworthy because it was heavily influenced by patient advocacy, especially from a young patient group. It’s not often that patients lead the charge for legislation like this.