PSMO-11 - Accelerating practice innovation: Closing the health security inequality gap

Meeting room 1.60
Organised by the FIP Health and Medicines Information Section in collaboration with the FIP Academic Pharmacy Section, the FIP Hospital Pharmacy Section, FIP Special Interest Group Pharmacy Practice Research, the International Pharmaceutical Students’ Federation (IPSF) and the FIP Commission on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR)

Chair(s)

Dr Andrew Gray, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and Dr Boyan Todorov, ExCo Member, FIP Health and Medicine Information Section, Switzerland

Introduction

The World Health Organization defines global public health security as the set of activities that minimise risk and negative impact of acute public health events which put people’s health in danger across geographical regions and international boundaries. Pharmacists working across the healthcare continuum contribute to closing the health security gap. Whether during natural disasters, epidemics and pandemics or acute threats, pharmacists take an active role in supporting their communities to close the inequality gap through the development and delivery of care and specialised programmes. In the developing world, the health security gap is larger and even harder to close due to the context of the environment and lack of resources. In the African region, a number of projects to address inequities in health security have been initiated in the past, such as Neema Village Concept Project in Tanzania, mobile pharmacy in Northern Uganda project and End Tuberculosis in the African region. These initiatives aim to improve the quality and effectiveness of medicines use, health services and increase access to care.

Despite pharmacists being at the forefront of patient access and being equipped with their medicine expertise, collaborative nature and passion for better care, there is an evident issue of how efforts are translated into sustainable and scalable outcomes. Thinking about the implementation of the projects early has the potential to set them up for success and ensure the long term impact on health outcomes. Implementation science introduces a “bridge” in the form of methods to promote the systematic uptake of evidence into routine practice and improve quality and effectiveness.  During this session, pharmacists will receive guidance for evidence-based applications to close the health security gap they identified and implementation science methods to integrate into everyday healthcare delivery

Programme

14:30 – 14:40 Introduction by the chairs
14:40 – 15:10

Identify challenges with implementing activities closing the health security inequity gap: Needs analysis, reporting, monitoring, and evaluation
Dr Luna El Bizri, ExCo member of the FIP Health and Medicine Information Section, Lebanon

15:10 – 15:30 Methods for translating evidence into practice in the context of pharmacist-delivered initiatives: Application-based
Ms Veronika Seda, The University of Sydney, Australia
15:30 – 15:55

Panel discussion

  • Dr. Sham Moodley, South Africa, FIP CPS ExCO & B4SA Covid vaccine lead, South Africa
  • Ms Barbara Scoralick Villela, ICAP Columbia University, New York, USA
15:55 – 16:00 Closing

Learning objectives

  • To identify and learn about the inequality in health security in their own practice.
  • To understand concrete actions they will take to address the inequality in health security.
  • To remember methods and strategies to apply to their innovations/projects that assist with closing the inequality in health security gap.

Take home messages

  • Pharmacists are pivotal healthcare innovators, equipped with knowledge to close the gap in health security inequalities wherever they practice. 
  • Despite pharmacists being at the forefront of patient access and being well equipped, there is an evident issue in how they translate the efforts into sustainable and scalable outcomes. 
  • Effective and structured planning, followed by the application of implementation science methods have been proven effective in accelerating innovation through delivery into sustainment and scale up.