(172) Leveraging university initiatives to engage students in addressing local health disparities

Objective : To describe student participation in new community engaged health promotion programs facilitated by University outreach efforts that are aimed at impacting the health and wellness of surrounding under-resourced communities.

Methods: Duquesne University Center for Integrative Health offers community engaged health promotion programs aimed at addressing health disparities in the local community. Instituting these new programs presented opportunities to engage pharmacy learners in multiple COEPA subdomains including communication, cultural and structural humility, person-centered care, advocacy, and population health and wellness. Students engaged in patient interviews in the community, led telehealth based disease state management classes, and designed educational content for these classes. These experiences augmented existing outpatient focused APPEs or were offered as additional learning opportunities to students.

Results: During a two-year period, students on three different APPE experiences engaged in patient care visits in the community after COVID-19 restrictions lifted. Students participated in medication focused interviews and interacted with an interdisciplinary team, including community health workers and a registered dietitian. APPE students also participated in teaching group education courses for the American Heart Association Self-Monitoring Blood Pressure Program (SMBPP). Additionally, students in the second and fourth year of the Doctor of Pharmacy Program developed interactive lesson plans for the SMBPP curriculum.

Conclusions: Including student learners in university initiatives can impact COEPA outcomes while simultaneously improving the health and wellness of the community. Advantages include providing additional meaningful experiences for APPE students, whereas disadvantages include limitations to the number of APPE students that can be engaged, and limited scheduled availability for non-APPE students.