Pharmacists’ Role in Public Health

In my last blog, I mentioned how I realized I didn’t want to be a traditional pharmacist my last year of pharmacy school. When I really thought about how I wanted to help people? It wasn’t treating a condition but preventing it.

Six months after graduating from pharmacy school, I enrolled at George Washington University where I obtained my Masters in Public Health. 

My perspective of healthcare as a practitioner was forever changed.

Public health taught me how  to take a problem and see it as a whole (on an individual, community, societal, and organizational level). It makes everyone and everything accountable for the health problem(s).

In one of my classes, a professor told this story about public health. 

A traveler walks by and sees a man drowning in the river. As a good samaritan, he jumps in and saves their life. As the traveler continues the paths, he notices another person drowning. He jumps in to save them.  The traveler does this again. And again. And again. After the sixth  time, the traveler  told the other guys to keep saving lives (healthcare professionals: pharmacists, doctors, nurses, etc.). 

At the top of the trail, the travelers found an unforeseeable collapsed bridge. The people  were walking to the bottom of the river.  The traveler decides to fix the main problem: the bridge to prevent future calamities. 

This is public health.

 Public health is about being proactive to disease state rather than reactive such as the medical model. Public health is where you are. 

“Where you live impacts your communities’ health and you make your communities healthier, stronger, and safer!”

You are a pharmacist. Whether you are registered or not. You are a pharmacist!  Didn’t you graduate from pharmacy school? Don’t you have a PharmD?

You are a pharmacist.

You are a medication expert.

You are the most accessible health care provider in every neighborhood.

You impact the lives around you.

You make your community healthier, stronger, and safer

Just last week, I had to perform CPR on my neighbor who had a sucide attempt. This is public health. This is health care. This is being a pharmacist.

I’m serious when I say, “pharmacy is only limited if you are™”! I may not change the world, but I am changing the world around me. 

I want the community I grew up in to stop referring to their medications as the “water pill,“ sugar pill,” and “nerve pill.” I want my community to know that the “water pill” could be Lasix; the “sugar pill” could be Metformin; and the “nerve pill” could be Paxil.

This is why I conduct(ed) and present(ed)  independent research on mental health, cardiovascular disease prevention, HIV prevention in African American Women aged 18-24. 

This is why I serve as a preceptor teaching new practitioners about pharmacists' role in public health. 

This is why I serve on a non-profit board that teaches financial literacy to the people of color. 

Public health is where you are. You can impact your community now. You don’t have to wait until you RPh behind your name.