New ASHP Statement Points To Pharmacists' Role In Eliminating Health Disparities

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 14 Apr 2008 - 5:00 PDT

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A new statement to be published by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) underscores the vital role hospital and health-system pharmacists play in eliminating racial and ethnic disparities, which continue to be a major public health problem in the United States.

The ASHP Statement on Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care appears in the April 15, 2008, issue of the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy (Am J Health-Syst Pharm 2008 65:728-33). The statement is now online at http://www.ajhp.org.

Health disparities stem from social and economic inequality, cultural and linguistic barriers, and persistent racial and ethnic discrimination, according to the statement. Evidence also shows that some health disparities can be attributed to differences in the quality of health care that racial and ethnic groups receive, the statement says.

"Pharmacists in hospitals and health systems can and should take a lead role in attempting to recognize and treat each of our patients as individuals and help overcome some of the key issues related to health disparities, such as poor disease management and increased mortalities and medication errors," said ASHP President Janet A Silvester, M.B.A., FASHP. "Overall, our goal is to reach better medical outcomes for our patients, particularly in the use of medications."

Pharmacists can play leading roles in building culturally competent systems of care to reduce the disparities, according to the statement, by:

- Raising awareness of health disparities among health care providers, health-system administrators, the public, and others.

- Measuring progress toward reducing health care disparities after collecting and reporting data on health care access, use and outcomes by racial and ethnic minorities.

- Ensuring effective communication among providers and with patients, such as adapting messages to fit the patients' language skills and primary languages.

- Promoting a more diverse and culturally competent health care workforce and environment.

- Fostering consistent use of multidisciplinary teams and evidence-based guidelines for patient care.

- Researching, identifying and disseminating best practices for providing culturally competent care and reducing disparities in health care.

Eliminating health disparities is "so important," the statement says, that it's included as one of two overarching goals for Healthy People 2010. That initiative, which is managed by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in the U.S. Health and Human Services, calls for individuals, communities, professionals and others to achieve a series of health objectives, such as reducing the number of new cancer cases.

Lourdes M. Cuellar, M.S., FASHP, director of pharmacy and clinical services and quality at Memorial Hermann-TIRR Hospital at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, led an expert panel that drafted the statement. The panel included Donald T. Kishi, Pharm.D., FCSHP, Folakemi T. Odedina, Ph.D., Lih-Jen Wang, Pharm.D., FASHP, BCPS, and Anthony K. Wutoh, Ph.D. To view the statement, click here. Enter "ashppr" when prompted for a username and password.

About ASHP

For more than 60 years, ASHP has helped pharmacists who practice in hospitals and health systems improve medication use and enhance patient safety. The Society's 30,000 members include pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who practice in inpatient, outpatient, home-care, and long-term-care settings, as well as pharmacy students. For more information about the wide array of ASHP activities and the many ways in which pharmacists help people make the best use of medicines, visit ASHP's Web site, http://www.ashp.org, or its consumer Web site, http://www.SafeMedication.com.

American Society of Health-System Pharmacists