Stephanie Pavlasky and Caitlin Esteves are final-year PharmD candidates at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy.
The University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy APhA–ASP Chapter was proud to receive the APhA–ASP Chapter Patient Care Award at APhA2024 in Orlando this past March. Our chapter has nearly 300 members who engage in all six national APhA–ASP patient care operations. Along with our faculty, we support five school-specific initiatives including Infectious Disease, Pediatrics, “Silver Scripts,” Medication Adherence, and Smoking Cessation.
Our hard work was also reflected this past year with three Region 2 Awards for Operations OTC Medication Safety, Substance Use Disorder, and Reproductive Health. Our chapter has created a leadership structure and unifying “Dean’s Theme” each year that fosters collaboration school-wide to afford a greater reach to patients and communities.
Leadership structure
Each APhA–ASP operation has a third-year and second-year student pharmacist leader who oversees individual project leaders in a committee-style group. These operation leaders are on the chapter’s APhA–ASP Executive Board, allowing them to share upcoming projects, brainstorm ideas, and work collaboratively with other committees.
Our chapter president and president-elect are also members of the Pitt Pharmacy Professional Council, a group consisting of 22 student pharmacy organization presidents. The Professional Council meets once a month to discuss upcoming events, share opportunities for collaboration, and note any support that an organization may need.
Dean’s Theme
Each year, our chapter supports a Dean’s Theme operation. The goal is to inspire all student organizations to come together to make the biggest community impact possible for a specific operation.
Our Dean’s Theme for the 2022–2023 school year was Operation Diabetes. Every first- through third-year student pharmacist attended and/or planned at least one Operation Diabetes event. At Professional Council meetings, we discussed the planning of each organization’s event and where there was opportunity for more support or collaboration. As a chapter, we were able to host more than 20 events on the topic of diabetes with 17 of those being new, innovative events that included how diabetes related to different fields of pharmacy such as managed care, industry, and medical cannabis to meet the interests of our student population.
Organization collaboration
Through the Professional Council, our chapter collaborated with the school’s Rho Chi chapter to give monthly health talks at the Salvation Army’s Adult Rehabilitation Center in a nearby neighborhood. Students discussed diabetes care, including screening, treatment, and prevention with patients at the facility. Patients asked any questions they wished related to diabetes. Any patient who brought up serious concerns was able to get a referral to appropriate providers. Through this collaboration, our students were able to connect with more than 50 patients in the community.
Along with interorganization collaboration, we also encourage interoperation collaboration within APhA–ASP. Our Operation Diabetes leaders were able to collaborate with Operation Reproductive Health to create one of the most impactful events of the year. These operations created community partnerships with eight women’s shelters in the Pittsburgh area. The Diabetes in Pregnancy event included local resource brainstorming for patients. That information was distributed to the eight local pregnancy and women’s centers, which reached more than 600 patients.
The topics researched by student pharmacists included: local resources, recipes, physical exercises, stress management techniques, and more. All of the research was collated into lists and infographics, and the print materials were delivered to local shelters for patients and staff to review.
Where we are headed next
We will continue meeting monthly with organization leaders and bi-weekly with APhA–ASP Operation Leaders to provide support, brainstorming, and event promotion. The 2023–2024 Dean’s Theme was Operation Substance Use Disorder, and the 2024–2025 Dean’s Theme is Operation Medication Safety.
Our chapter is enhancing the operational structure of the Professional Council to foster even more organization collaboration with all APhA–ASP operations. Our student pharmacists remain innovative and impactful event planners within the school and community, ready to make an impact for patients and our future as leaders.