Encouraging Pharmacy Students to Become Agents of Change in Health Care

Abstract

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Gandhi The Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion established a set of goals to improve our nation's health over the first decade of the 21st century.1 These goals are contained in a document entitled Healthy People 2010 which acknowledges the role of individual behaviors on personal health and emphasizes health promotion and disease prevention. This includes promoting positive behaviors (such as the importance of regular exercise and eating a healthy diet) and preventing the start of negative behaviors (such as smoking or alcohol abuse). Healthy People 2010 set the goal to “Increase the proportion of schools of medicine, schools of nursing, and other health professional training schools whose basic curriculum for health care providers includes core competencies in health promotion and disease prevention.” In response to this goal the Healthy People Curriculum Task Force was formed in 2002. The Task Force was convened by the Association of Academic Health Centers and the Association of Teachers of Preventive Medicine. The Healthy People Curriculum Task Force included representatives from medicine, pharmacy, nursing, physician assistants, and other health professions. This Task Force developed the “Clinical Prevention and Population Curriculum Framework,”2 which included the identification of 18 objectives for health education curriculum. AACP's Center for the Advancement of Pharmaceutical Education (CAPE) 2004 Educational Outcomes heavily focuses on health promotion and disease prevention.3 Looking at these 3 sets of documents, it is understood that the profession of pharmacy has a clear focus on these topics. But the question is how do we teach these concepts and how can we ensure that our students take personal responsibility for their own health? Before they can teach their patients, students should ideally be able to model these behaviors. I believe it can be done with curricular modification. We carefully monitor the academic and professional advancement of our students. But the majority of schools do not pay the same level of attention to the personal health of their students. Look at your P1 students. You assume they are healthy. They are young and the majority of them have never experienced a major illness. But are they healthy? I believe we take the health of our students for granted. We hope that they are taking care of themselves and that they know that it is important to take responsibility for their health status. I do not believe, however, that we truly understand the health status and behaviors of our students. College student behavior is plagued by high levels of stress, poor nutrition, high cholesterol and obesity, tobacco use, alcohol and other drug abuse, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)/depression, and unprotected sex. A 2003 study of Pennsylvania State University students (average age 20 years) found that 69% reported that stress was their biggest health concern followed by alcohol consumption (40%), nutrition (34%), depression (33%), and tobacco use (32%).4