Mrs. Lúcia Santos Secretary General of the Centre Region Branch of the Portuguese Pharmaceutical Society. Graduated in pharmaceutical sciences in 1996, by the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Coimbra University (Portugal), and Master in Public Health, degree issued in 2004 by the Faculty of Medicine of the same University. Presently, a PhD student developing her research project in the area of food security. Since 2014, develops and coordinates projects regarding active and healthy ageing, particularly related to the topic adherence, integrating the coordinating team of “Ageing@Coimbra”, one of the European reference sites for active and healthy ageing. Since 2015, co-coordinator of the general objective 2: “Reinforce the role of the pharmacist” of the A1 Renovated Action Plan 2016-2018 of the EIP on AHA.
The focus of general objective (GO) 2 is to strengthen the role of pharmacists to support targeted patient adherence interventions. Effective interventions to improve adherence requires a multifactorial approach. As frontline healthcare providers, pharmacists are most accessible in the community but currently spend, in average, less than 20% of their time providing consultation and medicine therapy management. Several studies demonstrate that, although improving adherence drives up the overall medicine costs, it can provide economic return from reduced global healthcare costs. And, above all, it clearly improves the patient’s health status and wellbeing. So, the role of the pharmacist should shift from purely dispensing to that of a more integrated health service provider who uses knowledge and expertise in counselling and medication management. This presentation will focus on some of the specific objectives and sprints, proposed in the A1 RAP, in order to achieve the main goal – reinforcement of the pharmacist’s role.