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WASHINGTON — The National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) and the National Consumers League (NCL) have announced the awardees of the first "Script Your Future Medication Adherence Challenge" for student pharmacists.
The NACDS Foundation said Tuesday that the Medication Adherence Challenge is part of a public awareness campaign launched last year by NCL with over 100 public and private stakeholder organizations, including the foundation and AACP.
Dubbed Script Your Future, the campaign aims to heighten patient awareness of the need to take medications as prescribed. Nearly three out of four Americans don’t take their medications as directed, which accounts for more than a third of medicine-related hospitalizations and almost 125,000 deaths in the United States each year.
"These health care providers in-training have developed and implemented creative solutions for one of the biggest obstacles to patient health: poor medication adherence," NACDS Foundation president Kathleen Jaeger said in a statement. "Medication adherence education initiatives via community pharmacy assist patients in increasing their awareness of the importance of taking medications as prescribed, which helps improve health outcomes and prevent avoidable adverse events and unnecessary hospitalizations. The Script Your Future Medication Adherence Challenge has advanced that goal while training the next generation of pharmacists to continue aggressively advancing the public health."
The Script Your Future challenge is designed to engage student pharmacists in a public education effort to spur medication adherence, especially by patients with chronic diseases. Pharmacy school students participated in community outreach activities to boost awareness about the health consequences of poor adherence.
"Script Your Future elevates the public expectation for medication education, of which the pharmacist is well educated to provide," stated Lucinda Maine, AACP executive vice president and chief executive officer. "Student pharmacists work directly within communities to educate patients about medication adherence that leads to people living healthier lives as exemplified by the activities of the challenge awardees."
Via the campaign, more than 40,000 student pharmacists educated over 250,000 people nationwide last October about the importance of adhering to medication regimens.
This year’s award winners, selected from 81 participating colleges and schools of pharmacy, were the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (Target Market Challenge Award), Harding University College of Pharmacy (Social Media Challenge Award), Creighton University School of Pharmacy and Health Professions (National Challenge Award), Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine School of Pharmacy (National Challenge Award) and University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy (National Challenge Award).
"The goal is to educate the next generation of pharmacists to take a proactive role in encouraging patients to follow the instructions for taking their medication through medication adherence education," commented Sally Greenberg, NCL executive director.
