Elizabeth Gambacorta is a third-year PharmD candidate at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
The Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (ACPHS) APhA–ASP chapter has made major advancements over the past 3 years in policy, social media presence, professionalism, and collaborations with other professional organizations and chapters across the country. We embraced innovation during the pandemic, and to our surprise were honored to receive the APhA–ASP Most Improved Chapter Award at APhA2022 this past March.
This is how our chapter has improved from 2017–2018 to 2020–2021, along with advice for other aspiring APhA–ASP Chapters.
Advocating for the profession
First, I would like to discuss our improvements in policy awareness. In the 2017–2018 school year, we’d established a set of events called Advocacy Week, which was a week full of events when the student body learned about getting involved in pharmacy policy and advocacy. In 2020–2021, we expanded from a week into a whole month of pharmacy advocacy–themed events.
In collaboration with our campus Advocacy Alliance, we also created the Advocacy Certificate, which students obtained when they participated in a certain number of pharmacy advocacy events. Additionally, we collaborated with the Student Pharmacist Society of the State of New York—our school’s chapter of the state pharmacy advocacy organization—in several advocacy events throughout APhA–ASP’s Advocacy Month and beyond. ACPHS and three local APhA–ASP chapters also conducted a joint advocacy event, inspiring not only our student pharmacists but other students over Zoom.
Social media takeover
Capitalizing on our social media accounts was a vital way to stay connected with the student body in this technology-driven era, especially during lockdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic. Each patient care project (PCP) hosted a social media takeover campaign on ACPHS’s APhA–ASP’s social media accounts for a week, bringing awareness to their PCP, raffling off prizes to participating students, and directly interacting with students. We also collaborated with ACPHS’s chapter of the College of Psychiatric and Neurologic Pharmacy on a mental health social media campaign to raise awareness about various aspects of mental health.
The overall theme for this 6-month campaign was “Shape Your Mind, Shape Your Future.” Monthly topics included reaching out to friends and family that students suspected of struggling with mental illness, fighting homesickness, helping someone through grief, participating in outdoor activities, coping mechanisms during final exams, and awareness of the different mental illnesses.
Getting professional
The most-attended events that we hosted in the 2020–2021 school year were professionalism- themed events such as a professional headshot and CV/LinkedIn workshop we cohosted with the Industry Pharmacists Organization and the “Minority in Pharmacy” panel cohosted with the Multicultural Club, Black Student Union, and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Student societies of Health-System Pharmacists.
Our most popular event, which won our Student Government Association’s “Event of the Year Award,” was the Faculty Speaker Series. In this series, we asked 5 faculty members per semester to each talk on one night about a topic of their choice in a “TED Talk-style format” for about an hour throughout a week. This pharmacy practice virtual discussion series, my personal favorite event, was well-attended by the ACPHS community. It was a fantastic opportunity to see another side of faculty members on campus and hear what topics they are passionate about both inside and outside of pharmacy practice. They presented on getting involved in pharmacy policy, mindfulness, the opioid epidemic, COVID-19, careers in pharmacy, art techniques, new models of rounding, and ethical biases in the health care system.
Your chapter can do it, too!
We would like other APhA–ASP chapters to consider hosting similar creative events. Some might need refining as you go along and others might not work out—but still, try them out!
Collaborate with other organizations when possible. It increases the audience you reach, and you can share ideas with others. Also, know your audience when producing events. Rely on student body members for ideas or advice, which includes fellow executive board members, other professional organizations on campus, and even other APhA–ASP chapters. Ask previous executive board members for ideas—there might be events they didn’t have time to pursue!
Good luck and thank you to APhA–ASP for this award and recognition!