March 18, 2015
PhD candidate Andrew Roberts, PharmD, and his research collaborators used administrative claims data from 2009 to 2011 to investigate demographic characteristics and prescription and health-care use patterns of 7,180 members UNC Health Care Pharmacy Assistance Program.
His work won a 2015 Graduate Education Advancement Board Impact Award from the Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The awards recognize graduate students for contributions they make to North Carolina.
Medication costs present a major barrier to chronic disease management for patients with low income and without health insurance. The UNC Health Care Pharmacy Assistance Program is a charitable pharmacy benefit that provides low-income, uninsured North Carolina residents with prescriptions at low or no cost.
Roberts found that nearly half of PAP members receiving medications for high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes were optimally adherent to these treatments, reflecting medication adherence levels commonly seen among insured populations. Optimally adherent means the patients took their medicine as directed at least 80 percent of the time.
Older PAP members and those with more complex conditions were more likely to adhere to the treatments for their chronic diseases. Roberts also found that PAP members taking high blood pressure medicine as directed had significantly lower odds of being hospitalized.
Roberts and his collaborators showed that PAP provided reliable access to necessary drug therapies and may help reduce adverse health outcomes stemming from poor medication adherence. His findings will guide future efforts to bolster the impact of PAP and similar charitable programs serving financially vulnerable populations.
“Dr. Roberts offered to take a leadership role on one of the aims of this project, which examined adherence to medications among participants in the program and the effect of this adherence on health outcomes,” says Associate Professor Joel Farley, PhD. “This work resulted in an important first authored publication and accelerated the completion of the project and success of the grant.”
Farley is Roberts’s faculty adviser and a co-investigator on the research project.
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