Pfizer followed Eli Lilly’s lead in posting a list of $10 million in grants and charitable contributions the company made to US medical, scientific and patient organizations during the first quarter of 2008 as “part of an ongoing drive throughout the company to increase transparency.”

The disclosures include medical education grants, fellowship and scholarship support for institutions, grants to patient organizations, medical and scientific associations and academic or other medical centers and charitable contributions.

The largest of the items posted at pfizer.com/transparencyingrants was a grant of $3.4 million to the California Academy of Family Physicians for a three-year national professional education campaign around smoking cessation. Pfizer markets Chantix for smoking cessation. Other grants included $500,000 to Family Health International for malaria patient education and treatment and $237,500 to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for its clinical investigator training program with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

As with Lilly’s, the site will be updated quarterly.

Pfizer began disclosing political contributions and registering clinical trials with clinicaltrials.gov in 2002. In 2004, the company began publicly posting clinical trial results at clinicalstudyresults.org. In 2006 Pfizer launched a regularly updated public site describing compounds under development and their progress, and in 2007, Pfizer began reporting FDA post-marketing commitments relating to safety, efficacy or the use of medicines.