“We are not used to planning something directly on campus that is not just going to accept pharmacy students, but the whole student population,” said third-year pharmacy student Katrina Watson. | Justin Cross/The Cougar
For the first time in UH history, students from the College of Pharmacy celebrated the American Pharmacist Month Extravaganza on Friday afternoon at Butler Plaza.
This event was organized by four of the 17 pharmacy-related student organizations on campus including the American Pharmacists Association – Academy of Student Pharmacists (APhA-ASP), Student National Pharmaceutical Association (SNPhA), Student Society of Health-System Pharmacists (SSHP) and National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA).
Students set tables with posters of information that focused on projects and initiatives such as Operation Diabetes, Operation Immunization, OTC (over-the-counter) Medication Safety, Operation Heart, Generation Rx, Antibiotic Awareness, medication safety, smoking cessation, mental health, Power to End Stroke, legislation and chronic kidney disease.
“I really loved this because it is very informational,” Biology senior Adanma Egu said. “It actually increases our knowledge and gives us more awareness about kidney disease, hypertension, diabetes, HIV, medications, prescribed drugs.”
In addition, students were given HIV and hepatitis C screenings by fourth-year pharmacy student Chris Wilson with the help of pharmacist Jennifer Fulbright, who works at a Cedra Pharmacy and volunteered to supervise the screenings and, if desired, counsel students.
“It is good to have students reach out to the rest of the university and promote communication and show the students all the resources out there,” Fulbright said.
Second-year pharmacy student Shannon Varghese, who is the American Pharmacist Month coordinator from APhA-ASP, said the event’s ultimate goal was to promote the profession and let students, faculty and staff learn about what pharmacy students are trained to do.
Students who completed a card showing that they stopped at all the stands are automatically entered a raffle to win a Fitbit tracker. To get a sticker, they had to play games and ask questions to the pharmacy students.
“I think it is important to educate students about these different things because we are so impressionable in college,” Varghese said.
Varghese said that with this event, students learned about their bodies, medications, how to take care of themselves and eating habits — all the topics they would not get exposure to if they were not in a science class.
Besides being an opportunity for pharmacy students to share their knowledge with the UH community, the event was also intended to raise awareness about what it really means to be a pharmacist.
“There is a stigma overall that pharmacists just sit behind the counter in CVS or Walgreens, and we just count the pills and then we dispense them to (patients),” said Katrina Watson, third-year pharmacy student and president of APhA-ASP’s UH chapter. “But in actuality, pharmacists are, in a sense we are just extremely smart and educated so we can do so much more than count the pills. We really are the drugs experts.”
In fact, the College of Pharmacy at UH is renowned for being one of the best. According to the 2016 U.S. News & World Report, the college is among the top pharmacy schools in the nation, ranking at 44th in 2016.
“With American Pharmacist Month, we are fighting for our patients, but we are also fighting for our professions,” Watson said.
A previous version of this story had incorrectly attributed the quote in the cutline. This version of the story has been changed to reflect the correct attribution.
