Paul Ambrose Scholars Program - Developed Materials
Paul Ambrose Scholars Program - Project Proposal
Title
Controlling
blood pressure in migrant farm workers by encouraging medication adherence
Project Description
The Leading Health
Indicator that I will address is Clinical Preventative Services HDS-12 to
“increase the proportion of adults with hypertension whose blood pressure is
under control.
I will coordinate this project with the community partner, Proteus,
an organization providing health services to migrant and seasonal farm workers
across Iowa and I have partnered with Lacey Naaktgeboren, Migrant Health Program Director,
and Emily Sinnwell, Bilingual Clinical Director at Proteus for this
project.
The Paul
Ambrose grant will provide support for medication boxes, medication list pocket
cards, and educational materials related to medication adherence to the mobile health clinic site in Williamsburg, IA during
Summer 2014. The Williamsburg clinic
serves 300 migrant farmworkers who are mostly bilingual residing in three camps
with their families. Some common
conditions that the workers face are diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. Patients also tend to be non-adherent to
their medication and this is an opportunity for pharmacy students to improve
patient care. Following the physician visit, I will interview patients using the Drug
Adherence Work Up (DRAW) tool to assess the cause of medication non-adherence. I
will then educate patients about the importance of medication adherence,
provide an educational pamphlet, and a medication pill box to encourage
adherence. Patients will also be
provided with a medication list pocket card with their most recent labs (hemoglobin A1c, blood pressure, and cholesterol) to be available
for emergencies and to help ensure continuity of care when the farm workers
leave the state. The
health education materials will be selected or designed according to the CDC
Simply Put Health Literacy guide and will be available in both English and
Spanish at a basic reading level, and I will ensure that pictograms are used
for patients who are unable to read.
My passion for this project stems
from my experience of trying to communicate with a Hispanic patient who only
spoke Spanish and understanding the difficulties that can result due to
cultural and language barriers. Since
then, I have made it a priority to increase opportunities for pharmacy students
focusing on foreign languages and international issues and I recently developed
a six week medical Spanish workshop for pharmacy students to improve our
ability to conduct medication counseling in Spanish. In addition to improving the health of the patients, being a Paul Ambrose Scholar would allow me to expand
opportunities for pharmacy students to be directly involved in migrant health care
so that patients receive more comprehensive care. I am also currently helping with Proteus’
long sleeve shirt drive to bring awareness to the
dangers farmworkers face working with pesticides, a campus-wide food drive to benefit
their food pantry, and a medication packaging service project. It is my goal that through these
opportunities, other pharmacy students and I will improve our clinical skills
and become aware of some cultural differences that impact patient care.
DRAW
Medication Adherence Tool:
http://millionhearts.hhs.gov/Docs/TUPD/DRAW_Tool.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23945734
CDC Health
Literacy Simply Put Guide:
http://www.cdc.gov/healthliteracy/pdf/simply_put.pdf
