Public Health Outcomes Need More Pharmacist Involvement

Greater collaboration between public health and pharmacy professionals could go a long way toward improving public health outcomes in the United States, explains a guest editorial in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal Preventing Chronic Disease. 

The editorial, written by pharmacy and public health professionals, accompanied a collection of 16 articles describing real-world pharmacist contributions to public health. The papers describe medication therapy management services by pharmacists at federally qualified health centers, latent tuberculosis treatment provided to patients on behalf of the New Mexico health department, and student education on opioid misuse taught by student pharmacists, among other initiatives. 

“As pharmacists are asked to implement more preventive services, public health partners have opportunities to apply their expertise to support them, thus establishing mutually beneficial collaborations,” the editorial points out. “For example, public health partners can help pharmacists evaluate their process and outcomes to strengthen the way they capture and communicate success stories, especially to nonpharmacist audiences.” 

To enhance partnerships between pharmacy and public health professionals, the editorial calls for the removal of barriers that prohibit pharmacists from practicing to the full extent of their training. The public health infrastructure should also seek to fully integrate pharmacists into community health needs assessments, disease surveillance, and health outcome monitoring.

“Community pharmacies now exist in a patient-information vacuum,” the editorial observes. “We need to break down the barriers that isolate community pharmacy from the wider public health and healthcare systems and to include pharmacy in health information exchanges and surveillance systems.” 

As for pharmacists, they need to expand their professional vision to see themselves part of a wider community and seek out collaboration with other healthcare professionals. This means getting out of their comfort zones, welcoming professionals from other disciplines into their professional organizations and events, and writing about their contributions in publications that target more than pharmacy researchers. 

“Dissemination of information on the contribution of the pharmacy profession to public health is essential to creating awareness among other health professionals and the public about the integral role of pharmacy in public health,” the editorial states. “Such awareness is crucial to addressing health disparities, given that in most underserved communities, pharmacies are the initial point of contact with the health infrastructure.” 

—Jolynn Tumolo

Reference

Strand MA, DiPietro Mager NA, Hall L, Martin SL, Sarpong DF. Pharmacy Contributions to Improved Population Health: Expanding the Public Health Roundtable. Prev Chronic Dis. 2020;17:E113. Published 2020 Sep 24. doi:10.5888/pcd17.200350