Community Advocacy for the Pharmacist

Background:  Creating demand among patients for pharmacist-provided care is a goal of the Joint Commission of Pharmacy Practitioners (1). Combining this with data on medication adherence, American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) set out to engage the schools of pharmacy in medication adherence. -          “Half of...prescriptions...are not taken as prescribed” (2) -          “Approximately 125,000 deaths per year in the United States are linked to medication non-adherence” (3) -          “Between 33 and 69% of medication-related hospital admissions in the U.S. are due to poor adherence” (2) -          “For every additional dollar spent on adhering to a prescribed medication, medical costs would be reduced by $7.00 for people with diabetes; $5.10 for people with high cholesterol; and $3.98 for people with high blood pressure” (4) -          “Patients who do not take their medications...cost the U.S. health care system an estimated $290 billion...every year”  (5)

Program background:  AACP joined the Script Your Future (SYF) campaign in 2009. Following the student pharmacist activities at the campaign launch in May 2010, the team wanted to make SYF materials available to the nation’s schools of pharmacy for community projects. To encourage the use of materials, a Challenge was designed to create incentives for participation.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  Program evaluation goals were set based on response to previous opportunities. The team agreed 10-12 schools conducting 1-2 activities in the campus community would be considered success. To evaluate the activities of each School, a 5-page summary and Appendix was submitted. At the conclusion of the Challenge, 81 schools participated. Schools mobilized over 40,000 students and reached over 250,000 patients for one-on-one or small group medication adherence and medication counseling sessions. SYF medication adherence materials were customized and translated into more than 12 languages, including Braille and a “large print” series. More than 15 YouTube videos were created and shared. In the final ten days of the Challenge, Schools drove a 400% increase in the social media traffic for the SYF campaign, and a twitter chat reached over 23,000 twitter users.

Conclusions:  -          Providing the proper materials mobilizes community outreach while also providing for consistent messaging. -          Allowing health communications messaging to be customized to local populations is critical to the success of any strategy. -          Communities are interested in engaging for a smaller size prize amounts when it includes national-level recognition.

Implications for research and/or practice:  -          The traditional model of health communications should adapt to put the “fun” back into community engagement strategies -          The Challenge model should expand its reach in version 2.0 and be used by other groups for their initiatives. (1)    http://www.aacp.org/resources/historicaldocuments/Documents/JCPPFutureVisionofPharmacyPracticeFINAL.pdf

(2)    Osterberg L, Blaschke T. Adherence to medication. N Engl J Med. 2005 Aug 4;353(5):487-97. (3)    McCarthy R. The Price You Pay for the Drug Not Taken. Business Health 1998;16:27-33. (4)    Senst BL, Achusim LE, Genest RP, Cosentino LA, Ford CC, Little JA, et al. Practical approach to determining costs and frequency of adverse drug events in a health care network. Am J Health Syst Pharm. 2001 Jun 15;58(12):1126-32. (5)    http://www.nehi.net/news/press_releases/110/nehi_research_shows_patient_medication_nonadherence_costs_health_care_system_290_billion