Convincing children with chronic diseases to take their medicine can be just as challenging as getting them to eat their vegetables.
Knowing how often kids accompany their parents to pick up prescriptions at pharmacies could lead to better ways of communicating with children about their medication, says Delesha Carpenter, PhD, MSPH, an assistant professor in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
Carpenter is working with faculty at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy to examine how often children with chronic diseases accompany their parents to pick up prescriptions at community pharmacies. Her collaborators at Pitt are Olufunmilola Odukoya, PhD, and Lucas Berenbrock, PharmD. The project is supported by a $35,000 grant from the Community Pharmacy Foundation.
Odukoya and Berenbrock will both be studying a pharmacy in an urban area while Carpenter studies a rural pharmacy in Burnsville, North Carolina.
“We want to see to see if pharmacies are good places to provide medication education to children with chronic diseases,” Carpenter says. “If we find that children often come with their parents, then that could make the pharmacy a good place for a medication intervention.”
The National Council on Patient Information and Education has recognized that the improper use of prescription medicines in children is a national health problem that affects children of all ages, in all parts of the country, and of every ethnic and socioeconomic group.
For children with chronic diseases, medication education can increase self-efficacy and improve adherence rates. However, there is little information on the barriers to educating those children about their medicines, Carpenter says.
“We also hope to understand the educational preferences these kids might have so we can determine sustainable strategies for engaging children and their caregivers in community pharmacies,” Carpenter says.
By Aren Besson