Pharmacists deliver important public health services such as vaccinations, point-of-care testing, and chronic and acute disease prevention and management. When many health care organizations restricted patient access to noncritical services in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, patients with chronic diseases struggled to receive routine care. Citing data published earlier this year in JAPhA, authors of the new commentary wrote that from early 2021 to May 2023, community pharmacies provided more than 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, representing more than two of every five doses administered in the United States. Prev Chronic Dis 2020;17:190440. Jakeman B, Logothetis SJ, Roberts MH, Bachyrycz A, Fortune D, Borrego ME, et al. Am J Health Syst Pharm 2008;65(5):4627. This content was published in 2007. Prev Chronic Dis 2020;17:E88. England Choosing health through pharmacy. Prev Chronic Dis 2018;15:E14. 5Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities Research and Education, College of Pharmacy, Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, Louisiana. This special collection of articles in Preventing Chronic Disease highlights the contributions of pharmacy to the field of public health and expands the vision of how pharmacy can improve population health. COVID-19 has brought into full view the need to address health inequities experienced by some segments of the US population (18). Public health and pharmacy leaders can also advocate for policies that reduce the current obstacles to pharmacists delivering preventive and health promotion services. Cadogan CA, Hughes CM. State and regional variation in prescription- and payment-related promoters of adherence to blood pressure medication. MPH, Department of Pharmacy Practice, Ohio Northern University Raabe College of Pharmacy, 525 S. Main St, Ada, OH 45810. Furthermore, a PubMed search identified 26 studies on community health needs assessments, but none of these studies included pharmacy. Therefore, community pharmacists are in a position to educate patients about the importance of protecting themselves from exposure to COVID-19. Altowaijri A, Phillips CJ, Fitzsimmons D. A systematic review of the clinical and economic effectiveness of clinical pharmacist intervention in secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. The researchers showed improvement in the attitudes and perceptions among pharmacists about opioid-related patient behaviors and the clinical value of screening for opioid misuse. CDC recognizes pharmacists can help to achieve public health outcomes not only in chronic diseases but also in HIV testing, antimicrobial stewardship programs, immunizations, and many others. The main areas of pharmacy practice governed by each domain, with examples, are listed in Panel 3. Prev Chronic Dis 2020;17:E89. Am J Public Health 2015;105(3):42731. Accessed July 8, 2020. CDC is not responsible for Section 508 compliance (accessibility) on other federal or private website. https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20170817.061561/full/. It therefore covers medicine development, manufacture, marketing, distribution, pricing and reimbursement, formulary management, pharmacovigilance, patient eligibility, prescribing practice and professional services, particularly pharmaceutical services. JAMA 2009;302(1):846. The availability of pharmacies in the United States: 2007-2015. There are substantial challenges related to public health including issues associated with health care inequalities, aging populations, increasing levels of chronic disease and urbanization [].There is a need to increase access to primary care services, control costs, and improve outcomes in health care for patients . However, this linkage would require formal integration of pharmacy and public health informatics systems, something that still needs to be improved. Qato DM, Zenk S, Wilder J, Harrington R, Gaskin D, Alexander GC. Included in this Virtual Issue are: a paper from Australia detailing rural pharmacists provision of injecting equipment and/or opioid substitution treatment and the impacts of such on pharmacies in South Australia, a manuscript from Canada describing a systematic documentary analysis of how the pharmacists role with respect to natural health products and dietary supplements is portrayed in the literature, and examining the ethics of pharmacists providing counseling on products for which pharmacists may have little knowledge, a paper describing a qualitative study from the US identifying barriers to pharmacist adoption of a tobacco cessation protocol (Ask-Advise-Refer), a second US based paper detailing a study examining the impact of 3 characteristics of in-house immunization services on community pharmacies adoption decisions, a literature review from the UK describing the feasibility of providing pharmacy-based services for alcohol misuse, a qualitative study from the UK examining the barriers of providing needle-exchange services within community pharmacies, a UK paper detailing community pharmacists contributions to the public health issue of weight management, a study from the UK examining the involvement of pharmacy support staff in delivering services to drug misusers, a study from the UK examining the awareness and impact of knowledge of association of smoking and occurrence of eye disease upon pharmacist smoking cessation guidance activities, a paper from the UK describing computer-tailored smoking cessation counseling provided from a community pharmacy, and. J Am Pharm Assoc (2003) 2017;57(2):162169.e1. Introduction. Ifeanyi Chiazor E, Evans M, van Woerden H, Oparah AC. Many readers of Preventing Chronic Disease are familiar with such models as RE-AIM (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, Maintenance) (47), and this model has been used to evaluate the population impact of projects implemented in community pharmacies (48). Santoli JM, Lindley MC, DeSilva MB, Kharbanda EO, Daley MF, Galloway L, et al. Articles by Rodis et al (5) and Ross et al (6) highlight the impact of pharmacists providing collaborative medication therapy management services to patients in federally qualified health centers. 2Clinical Professor, College of Pharmacy, The University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island. Finally, pharmacists needs to advocate more proactively for their role in the public health arena and to raise awareness of their contributions by publishing more often in journals read by a wider audience than just pharmacy researchers. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69(19):5913. JAMA Netw Open 2020;3(7):e209132. By the fall of 2020, many pharmacies will be offering 1 or more of the following COVID-19 diagnostic services: selling home testing kits, collecting specimens to send to partner laboratories for testing and reporting, collecting specimens for on-site symptomatic testing and reporting, and collecting specimens for point-of-care antibody surveillance (31,35,36). What are the implications for public health practice? Miriam Armstrong, chief executive of PharmacyHealthLink, explains what public health means and how pharmacists can contribute to it. The issues of alcohol abuse, tobacco use cessation, provision of needle exchange programs, use of health information technology (HIT) to facilitate public health outreach and service provision, and treatment of drug addictions are but a few of the impacts pharmacists are making to serve public health needs in rural and urban settings around the globe. These roles are assumed by local public health services; however, community pharmacists can play a significant role in COVID-19 testing (28). The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is reimbursing pharmacies for this COVID-19 testing, overcoming a major hurdle to pharmacy-based clinical and diagnostic services during the pandemic (38). Your 40s and 50s: Managing Health Changes. Instead, it perhaps reflects the prevailing focus on research on medicines and treatments rather than the broader health-related outcomes of pharmacy interventions. There are more than 67,000 pharmacies in the US, with 88.9% of individuals living within 5 miles of at least 1 pharmacy. identified 43 possible roles of pharmacists in critical situations [].All these findings showed the importance of pharmacy as a medical profession, in order to support or to complete the practice of physicians []. In this essay, the author. Berenbrok LA, Gabriel N, Coley KC, Hernandez I. Provide appropriate preventive medications, Address medication access issues in the face of pandemic restrictions, Educate patients about preventing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection and symptoms of the disease, Provide education on over-the-counter medications, Increase patient self-efficacy and reduce adverse outcomes from medications, Reduce novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission when a vaccine becomes available, Prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, Ensure access when medical facilities are not accepting patients, Empower patients, increase pharmacist role in multidisciplinary team, and improve population health. Building bridges between medical care and public health. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Provision of clinical preventive services by community pharmacists. It would be helpful to know what further public health education pharmacists need, and which types of training directly lead to improved population health. Deerfield (IL): Walgreens. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2019;68(33):71823. Linked to the local epidemiology division of the public health department, the data generated by sales records of antiviral medication could lead to early mitigation of influenza outbreaks. Auerbach J. Medicines have a high value in society principally because they affect health outcomes for the better (in the vast majority of cases), however, their benefits are highly influenced by individual and societal variations not only through genetic or physiological factors, but also by psycho-social factors (operating proximally or distally). Because people who postpone screening will continue to receive their medications from their pharmacies, community pharmacists will have the opportunity to encourage patients to receive these screenings to ensure effective chronic disease management. The collection serves as a call to researchers and professionals in pharmacy and public health to evaluate and publish their work in hopes of expanding on what is already known and being done. Prev Chronic Dis 2020;17:E91. The COVID-19 pandemic has created the opportunity to strengthen the US public health system to make it even more inclusive, accessible, and effective. The pandemic of COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of emergency preparedness and response (EP and R) in India's education, training, capacity building, and infrastructure growth. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has long recognized pharmacys role in addressing chronic diseases (4). Indeed, the current consultation on the future undergraduate pharmacy curriculum seems to be holding to the former approach, whereas Pharmacy HealthLink believes the profession needs to move far closer to the latter. Although pharmacy education accreditation standards related to public health competencies exist (37), many schools of pharmacy do not prioritize public health competencies in their curricula. For example, the UK Public Health Association, describes public health as an approach that:3. Ross LA, Bloodworth LS, Brown MA, Malinowski SS, Crane R, Sutton V, et al. Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by CDC or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website. Evaluations should be performed in such a way that they determine the unique attributes and distinct value provided by collaborations that include pharmacy partners as compared with collaborations that include other disciplines. However, achieving health equity will require that social determinants of health be considered not only in how one treats an individual patient but also in the delivery of pharmacist-provided services more broadly, such as determining who receives care and how it is received. Such awareness is crucial to addressing health disparities, given that in most underserved communities, pharmacies are the initial point of contact with the health infrastructure.