The Chapter of the Year formula at UNM: Part I
Annajita Rubio, PharmD, is a 2024 graduate of The University of New Mexico (UNM) College of Pharmacy and was the 2022–2023 UNM APhA–ASP Chapter president.
The University of New Mexico (UNM) College of Pharmacy APhA–ASP Chapter is proud of what we accomplished during the 2022–2023 school year and honored to have been selected as the 2022–2023 APhA–ASP Chapter of the Year!
In this two-part series, we will provide details on how we achieved this award.
Community Outreach Day
This student-led annual event at UNM was created to encourage student community service and raise public awareness of the role pharmacists play in the health care system. The presidents of APhA–ASP, the Student Society of Health-System Pharmacists, the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, and the Student Pharmacist Council collaborated to organize this day. Members of our APhA–ASP Chapter’s executive team were at the forefront of organizing the event by securing outreach sites throughout Albuquerque, creating training materials to prepare their peers in patient care or presentation skills, assigning students to sites, preparing all materials required, and advertising this city-wide event to the public.
Thanks to our chapter executive team’s hard work, every student pharmacist at our college of pharmacy was able to play a role in serving 2,705 patients at 35 locations across the city in one day, specifically during American Pharmacists Month. Our chapter showcased the impact Community Outreach Day had on our community, and on contributing to student pharmacists’ professional and personal growth, in our Innovative Programming submission to APhA–ASP. This led to our chapter receiving the Region 8 Innovative Programming Award, and two of our chapter members presented a poster and oral presentation to compete nationally at APhA’s 2024 Annual Meeting & Exposition.
Patient care project success
Our chapter participates in all 6 nationally recognized APhA–ASP patient care projects, in addition to chapter-specific initiatives. Operation Diabetes and Operation Heart were each recognized as regional winners during the Midyear Regional Meeting (MRM). Operation Substance Use Disorders and Operation Immunization were each recognized as national winners during APhA2024. Chapter-specific initiatives included Student Pharmacists Engaging in Acts of Kindness (SPEAK); Vials of Life; PRISM (language translating initiative); Special Events; and AIM: An Integrated Mind.
SPEAK focuses primarily on nonclinical community service projects. Vials of Life is a national program that our chapter adopted and modified. This initiative focuses on assisting first responders with finding a consolidated list of a patient’s health conditions, medications, and allergies in a centralized location (i.e., inside of a pill bottle, hence the name “Vials” of life). This vial can be placed in a patient’s refrigerator and/or car center console, and first responders can know to look in one of these locations if the patient places a “Vials of Life” sticker on their front door and/or car window. These vials are distributed by student pharmacists at health screenings or educational events to primarily target older adult patients and those who are at increased risk of medical emergencies.
Our chapter strives to increase awareness and utilization of the life-saving tool that can speak for our patients when they cannot speak for themselves in critical situations. PRISM is our chapter’s translation initiative that serves to provide our other APhA–ASP Chapter operations and initiatives translated documents, such as clinical services consent forms, educational presentations and handouts, and signage, that have been translated by volunteer student pharmacists proficient in languages other than English. This initiative is crucial to our multilingual community in New Mexico, where many patients primarily speak Spanish.
The Special Events team also coordinated with the annual Junior Diabetes Research Federation Carnival for children living with type 1 diabetes and the APhA–ASP Chapter end-of-the-year banquet. AIM: An Integrated Mind educated the participants about the importance of good mental health practices and tools they can use to practice self-care at a young age.
Expanded international involvement
Historically, our chapter’s International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation (IPSF) initiative was limited to HIV awareness. This past year, we created the first international vice president position at our chapter. Revamping our IPSF structure at the executive team level allowed our chapter members to participate in many different IPSF activities that weren’t present in the past. Our student pharmacists supported people living with HIV by attending the World AIDS Day Ceremony hosted in town. However, we are especially proud of the following events, as they were new ways our chapter could participate in IPSF campaigns and projects encouraged by APhA–ASP.
First, students from UNM’s Health Sciences campus joined together during their lunch break to celebrate World Heart Day. Gathering for a group advocacy project, student pharmacists and others in the area joined in a walk to recognize the survivors of cardiovascular disease and the pressures that our patients face in living day-to-day with this debilitating set of chronic diseases. To emphasize the importance of these issues, students chose to walk in the shape of a heart around the college of pharmacy building, checking the shape with a GPS-fitness tracking device. Results were then uploaded to the World Heart Federation website (world-heart-federation.org), where participants worldwide could publish their results. Even though this event was worldwide, the website was covered with GPS hearts created around our college.
Then, our international vice president organized a blood drive in an attempt to alleviate several critical community shortages of blood donations while creating our chapter’s first involvement in the Vampire Cup, an international blood donation drive campaign. Volunteer chapter members were stationed outside of a local library, asking patrons if they would be interested in donating blood. At the same time, resources and information about the shortage were provided, as well as means to help solve the crisis. This resulted in a total donation of 22 units of blood.
We also collaborated on an event with New Mexico’s Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) organization and Katie Bone, the famous American Ninja Warrior, a strong athlete living with type 1 diabetes who demonstrated to children living with type 1 diabetes that anything is possible. Volunteer student pharmacists colored coloring pages with children while they talked about delicious diabetic-friendly recipes and provided education on carb counting. Our chapter also provided free American Diabetes Association–approved type 2 diabetes risk assessments for parents and other guests at the event who were there as an ally to children living with type 1 diabetes.
We then raised awareness on World Tuberculosis Awareness Day by distributing informational flyers available in both English and Spanish about the dangers present in the contracting tuberculosis, harm reduction measures, outcomes for patients with tuberculosis, and statistics associated with the contraction of tuberculosis. The flyers were distributed in locations of high medical visibility such as primary care offices, hospital lobbies, student health clinics, food pantries, and local pharmacies.
Our chapter also created educational flyers that provided information about how to quit smoking or vaping, and free resources and hotlines. Student pharmacists distributed these flyers at UNM’s main campus and educated undergraduate students about the dangers of tobacco use and how a pharmacist can play a role in cessation.
Chapter members provided a host site for the IPSF student exchange program for the first time. Pharmacists across various community, specialty, and hospital sites readily agreed to allow our exchange student to shadow them and learn more about the role of a pharmacist in the United States. We also sent our chapter’s first student pharmacist as an exchange student to another country via the student exchange program. Finally, we funded a chapter member to attend the World Congress and represent APhA–ASP and our chapter for the first time.
In part two of our article, we will detail how our leadership structure changes and new membership activities led to increased chapter success.