International Pharmaceutical Students Federation Contact Person s Report American Pharmacists Association Academy of Student Pharmacists (APhA-ASP) www.pharmacist.com Adrian T. Hughes usaipsfcp@gmail.com 1. Introduction APhA-ASP is one of three academies within the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and it represents APhA s student pharmacist members. There are currently over 33,000 student pharmacists that are members of APhA-ASP at 129 colleges of pharmacy across the United States of America (U.S.A.). The mission of APhA-ASP is to be the collective voice of student pharmacists, to provide opportunities for professional growth, to improve patient care, and to envision and advance the future of pharmacy. The day-to-day operations of APhA-ASP are conducted by staff members as well as the nationally elected National Executive Committee, made up of five student pharmacists. These APhA-ASP leaders also work with four designated APhA-ASP National Standing Committees: Communication, Education, Awards, Policy, and International. The International Standing Committee is comprised of the U.S.A. IPSF National Officers. Additionally, APhA- ASP has regional leaders representing the eight regions of APhA-ASP. These leaders include the Regional Member-at-Large, the Regional Delegate, and the Midyear Regional Meeting Coordinator. 2. Education and Practice Activities American Pharmacist Month October is designated as American Pharmacist Month. Under the slogan of Know Your Pharmacist, Know Your Medicine, student pharmacists and other APhA members around the country focus on educating the public, policy makers, and other healthcare professionals about the importance of pharmacists as members of the healthcare team. Focus is placed on commitment to patient safety, proficiency as medication experts and the financial and medicinal effectiveness that pharmacists bring to the healthcare system.
Midyear Regional Meetings APhA-ASP is organized into eight regions across the United States of America. Each of these regions hosts a Midyear Regional Meeting (MRM), the only meetings in the U.S.A. that are designed solely for student pharmacists. They include leadership training, job expositions, informational presentations, poster presentations, and regional awards in addition to an in-depth policy development process. Each school proposes their own policy which is then debated and voted on in the regional house of delegates. Student pharmacists are also able to develop collaborations with other chapters (faculties) from their geographic area at these meetings. This helps to encourage communication between chapters and keep good ideas circulating. Thousands of student pharmacists attended each of the MRMs this year. APhA Annual Meeting & Exposition APhA Annual Meeting & Exposition is the largest meeting held annually by APhA and includes programming specifically for APhA-ASP members. Pharmacists and student pharmacists convene in the APhA House of Delegates to declare annual policies that further define the organization s mission towards the field of pharmacy. Student pharmacists also meet separately as the APhA-ASP House of Delegates where each chapter is represented to set their collective vision of the future of pharmacy. This is done through discussion of policies developed from the policies discussed at the MRMs. These policies are given to the APhA-ASP Policy Standing Committee for further action and implementation throughout the year. Other student programming at annual meeting includes the Closing Celebration, educational programs, career connection, and community pharmacy residency showcases. This year, the APhA Annual Meeting & Exposition was held in Orlando, Florida. Thousands of pharmacists and student pharmacists were in attendance. National Patient Counseling Competition The National Patient Counseling Competition (NPCC) begins at the local level. Each chapter holds a competition to select one student pharmacist who will represent them at APhA Annual Meeting at the national level. The local winner travels to APhA Annual Meeting to compete. At the national level student pharmacists are evaluated on both the content and style of the counseling session. This year, there were 126 national contestants, and many more local level participants. The top ten finalists are recognized on stage at the Annual meeting and the top four receive cash prizes. Leadership Development Student pharmacists who are in leadership at local, regional, and national positions meet in Washington, DC each July at the Summer Leadership Institute (SLI). This year 210 student
pharmacists will attend. At the meeting, time is spent teaching these new leaders about APhA-ASP as well as participating in leadership development. Separately, leaders from all three academies of APhA (including both pharmacists and student pharmacists) attend the January Business Meeting (JBM) in January and the Academies Leadership Meeting (ALM) in Washington, DC in April of each year to network, attend leadership development sessions, and most importantly, set goals for the year. Lastly, at all MRM Meetings and Annual Meetings all student pharmacists in attendance can participate in the Leadership Development Series of workshops, earning credits towards a Leadership Certificate after attending four sessions. 3. Public Health Activities HIV/AIDS: Over 18 chapters across the U.S.A. reported organizing 53 unique events to promote HIV/AIDS awareness. More than 650 students participated, helping to educate 2540 people about HIV/AIDS. A few chapters held fundraisers, collecting $6390 for various HIV/AIDS charities throughout the United States of America. The University of Arkansas raised $2400 to send 6 children with HIV to a weeklong health camp and the University of Missouri at Kansas City raised $3475 as part of their contribution to their local AIDS walk. Events organized by student leaders included weeklong activities, wearing red to promote awareness about HIV/AIDS, handing out the red ribbon, participation at health fairs and education events, and having guest speakers talk about HIV/AIDS to students. Humanitarian Campaign: This year 20 chapters participated to help APhA-ASP compete for the Vampire Cup. Each chapter organized their own blood drive events to collect over 780 units of blood, almost tripling APhA-ASP s previous year total of 260. Many schools were especially successful when they created a competition between pharmacy classes or between all of health care professional students on their campus, often rewarding the winning classes with a pizza or ice cream party. We also initiated a blood drive at the APhA Annual Meeting where all participants were encouraged to donate throughout their time at the conference. With our tremendous growth in participation this year relative to last year, we look forward to further increasing participation in the future. In addition, 7 chapters reported taking part in Pharmabridge or another book drive for Africa. Over 850 books and $1000 were collected through the various collaborations that were organized by these chapters, and while some schools are still raising money for the shipping charges, many of these books have been delivered to more than 5 countries in Africa. Healthy Living and Diabetes:
In the U.S.A., IPSF works in collaboration with APhA-ASP to promote diabetes awareness. This year, we had 17 chapters report 44 events with chapter IPSF activity on the IPSF Diabetes and Healthy Living campaign. Schools participated in events on World Diabetes Day as well as throughout the year, targeting underserved, immigrant, migrant worker, and refugee populations throughout the United States of America. Together, they screened 1401 patients for diabetes, educated over 1600 directly on how to manage diabetes, and reached over 400,000 through social media and television outreach campaigns. Student pharmacists from the University of Tennessee held an event to teach children through games and crafts the importance of healthy eating and exercise. Tuberculosis Campaign: While TB is not a large public health concern in the U.S.A., this year five schools participated in the Stop TB Campaign. At some these events, student pharmacists educated patients through international health fairs on TB and how to prevent the spread of TB. In other schools, education focused on the student pharmacists themselves, with the University of Iowa holding a movie screening to highlight the importance of TB education. Tobacco Alert Campaign: Student pharmacists primarily focus on education and screening for smoking cessation for the Tobacco Alert Campaign. This year, 13 APhA-ASP chapters reported holding 31 Tobacco Alert and Smoking Cessation events, reaching 1304 people through screening and education. Northeastern University s student pharmacists took advantage of their university s new smoke free campus initiative and hosted an event on their campus to provide education and cessation resources to other university students. At Rutgers University, student pharmacists worked to create a smoking cessation algorithm in Spanish to help with counseling patients who do not speak English. Pharmacy Profession Awareness Campaign: Advocacy for the profession of pharmacy is one of cornerstones of APhA-ASP activity for the last year. Student pharmacists participated in postcard and letter writing campaigns to help educate elected officials to stand for the ideals of APhA. Over 22 APhA-ASP chapters held fundraisers that raised over $20,000 for the APhA-PAC, a group that supports the election of individuals that support the profession of pharmacy. Individually, chapters reach out to their community through public health outreach and American pharmacist Month to educate community members about the role of the pharmacist in their health care. APhA-ASP Patient Care & Community Service Projects APhA-ASP also has five of its own campaigns known as Patient Care Projects and Community Service Projects: Operation Heart, Operation Diabetes, Operation Immunization,
Operation Self-care, and Generation Rx. Each focuses on education, screening, and community outreach for its respective disease state: heart disease, diabetes, vaccinepreventative diseases, over-the-counter medication use, and prescription drug abuse. Many APhA-ASP chapters focus much of their public health and education outreach efforts on these projects, to amazing effect. For example, collectively through Operation Diabetes alone, APhA-ASP members screened over 37,000 patients and reached more than 2.5 million through education and awareness outreach through the efforts of nearly 14,000 student pharmacists. Operation Immunization allowed over 10,000 student pharmacists to provide over 77,000 immunizations. Outstanding chapters in each of these projects, both regionally and nationally, are recognized for their achievements at APhA Annual Meeting and the individual MRMs. 4. Student Exchange Programme For the 2013-2014 year, the APhA-ASP/IPSF Student Exchange Programme (SEP) had goals of increasing the number of incoming IPSF SEP Exchange Students, developing a process to assist international students with obtaining visitor visas to the U.S.A. in order to participate in the program, and improving the quality of SEP in the United States of America. This year, we have 59 outgoing students (based on our quota from last year) and 41 incoming which is increased from 36 last year. SEP is operated by the APhA-ASP/IPSF Student Exchange Officer and Student Exchange Officer-elect. Each officer serves for two years and the during the senior officer s second year, she or he trains the junior officer. The Student Exchange Program was promoted to APhA-ASP membership through our yearly IPSF 101 Webinar, through information posted on our webpage and Facebook Page, emails to chapter (faculty) leadership on the local level, through informational booths at APhA-ASP MRM meetings, and finally through a workshop at the APhA Annual Meeting. All of these methods were used to promote host site development to current and potential Local Exchange Officers (LEOs) at various chapters. Guidelines and strategies to increase the size, number, and quality of host sites were improved and promoted this way. However, we have both lost host sites and had some reduce the number of students they will host. Additionally, we have had new sites start hosting students and other sites increase the number of students they will host. It seems as though these changes are unpredictable and dependent on leadership at individual chapters and logistics unique to each chapter. Students from certain countries may have difficulty obtaining visas to the U.S.A. as was seen last year when some students were denied visas. To help with this problem, we have created a visa application guideline document, modified our invitation letter, and created an optional letter of support detailing the incoming students' intentional professional experiences accompanied by a preceptor's signature. Unfortunately, we did still have a couple of students from Ghana denied visas to enter the U.S.A. for SEP. Thus, we have obtained advice from incoming students who have been able to obtain visas into the U.S.A. so that we can develop new strategies for addressing the problem next year.
Finally, we have taken various measures to improve SEP in the United States of America. Such changes included improving incoming and outgoing APhA-ASP/IPSF SEP contracts, creating a review system to help improve outgoing Application Forms (AFs) by offering students constructive criticism and feedback, utilizing surveys for all SEP participants to give us feedback in order to make improvements, allowing LEOs the opportunity for individualized Skype meetings, and piloting a Skype interview between incoming students and prospective hosts in times of question. We are excited to use what we have learned this year to improve SEP in the U.S. next year. 5. Other Activities In the past few years policy and advocacy for the profession of pharmacy have become a primary focus of APhA as well as APhA-ASP. It has become evident that if the profession of pharmacy is to realize its full potential, pharmacists and student pharmacists must advocate for these changes. APhA as a whole, including APhA-ASP, has been collaborating with many other pharmacy associations within the U.S.A. to work towards establishing provider status for pharmacists. This legal change would allow pharmacists to be recognized for their cognitive services and to function as part of the healthcare team in a more complete way. This is being accomplished currently in part through the Share Your Story campaign asking student pharmacists, pharmacists, and patients to share their personal stories of how pharmacists have impacted patients through pharmaceutical care. The APhA-ASP National President, Nicholas Capote, is currently inspiring all APhA-ASP/IPSF members to speak out for their profession, tell their stories, and advocate for their patients with the annual presidential theme for 2014-2015: "Discover Your Voice." 6. Closing Remarks IPSF within APhA-ASP is continuing to strengthen in many aspects. APhA-ASP members will be well represented at the 60 th World Congress with 20 members attending, most of who were screened through a pre-application process. The U.S.A. IPSF National Officers created a World Congress pre-application process to select ambitious members to best represent the U.S.A. internationally. At the 59th IPSF World Congress, APhA-ASP led the Policy 101 workshop, won first place in both the Member Association Poster Competition and the Clinical Skills Jeopardy Event, participated as members of the auditing committee, and seconded three motions that passed in the GA. SEP activity continues to grow steadily and improve in quality at the APhA-ASP/IPSF SEOs work diligently to modify and improve the program. Finally, APhA-ASP members hold positions at all levels of IPSF: Executive Board, PARO Regional Working Group, committees and sub-committees and even the FIP internship. We hope to continue our level of participation in IPSF on the international level. While IPSF is taking hold at more at more schools of pharmacy, growth continues to be slow due to many competing opportunities for student pharmacists. Successful IPSF chapters in
the U.S.A. often take on activities that are outside of the traditional IPSF campaigns to build and retain IPSF interest among their members. Many chapters host international pharmacist panels, multicultural dinners, or international education events to help APhA-ASP members connect with the diversity that surrounds their community and learn about the profession of pharmacy in other parts of the world. These chapters generally capitalize on the Public Health Campaigns in addition to APhA-ASP's Patient Care Projects by focusing their IPSF efforts on an international aspect of outreach: developing multi-lingual resources or targeting underserved minority populations. The International Standing Committee of APhA-ASP/ IPSF Officers is excited to continue to work to help foster and grow this enthusiasm for IPSF within the United State of America. We do this by helping individual chapters establish or further grow their SEP programs and by seeking new ways to bring the IPSF Public Health Campaigns into coordination and collaboration with the APhA-ASP Patient Care Projects. Throughout all of this, we strive to encourage innovation and constant curiosity about the world of pharmacy beyond our borders. Both APhA-ASP and IPSF are organizations which not only provide opportunities for student pharmacists to develop valuable skills for their careers, but also provide a forum for student pharmacists to be heard and to shape their futures together. The APhA-ASP IPSF officers look forward to continuing to build the IPSF spirit within APhA-ASP in the coming year.