APhA Engage

Care of Underserved Patients SIG Community

Mission

The mission of the Care of Underserved Patients SIG is to facilitate a network of practitioners, administrators, and educators who provide care for underserved patient populations and utilize the expertise and resources of that network to empower all pharmacists to provide patient-centered care to underserved patient populations.

Purpose

The Care of Underserved Patients SIG aims to provide a professional community of pharmacists and stakeholders who are currently practicing within or plan to be involved in caring for underserved patient populations. This may include clinical practice sites or volunteer work with federally-qualified health centers (FQHCs), free & charitable health clinics, 340B pharmacies, or other community-based pharmacy settings, such as community pharmacies. The purpose of this community is to assist pharmacists in identifying and sharing resources for underserved patients, helping pharmacists develop new sustainable services in these practice settings, teaching pharmacists, students and/or residents about caring for underserved populations, investigating reimbursement opportunities, and performing research in these practice settings.

What is an Underserved Population?

The SIG will consider patients underserved if they experience increased relative risk or susceptibility to adverse health outcomes as a result of limited resource availability. This could include patients who are experiencing disadvantages because of ability to pay for health care, ability to access health care, poor health literacy, residence in medically underserved areas/health professional shortage areas, or other disparities for reasons of race, religion, language group, gender, sexual orientation, social status, etc.

What is different about Caring for the Underserved Population?

Caring for the underserved population is special in that it often requires practitioners to consider more of the social determinants of health in providing these patients care.  These patients often have barriers to care, including but not limited to, the lack access to and resources to pay for medications, transportation, and/or healthy food, etc.; thus, practitioners should be resourceful advocates in taking care of these patients’ needs.

APhA-APPM SIG Leadership

SIG Leaders

• Coordinator: (Trang) Susan Nguyen

• Coordinator-elect: Jason Martinez

2020-21 SIG Committee Leaders

• Advocacy: 
  • Chair: Lisa Scholz
  • Co-Chair: Shondranika Ford
• Communication:  
  • Chair: Anna Staudt
  • Co-Chair: Chris Johnson
• Education:  
  • Chair: Emily Eddy
  • Co-Chair: Rhianna Fink

APhA-APPM Care of Underserved Patients SIG Committees

The Care of Underserved Patients SIG Committees and their charges for 2020-21 are:

• Advocacy Committee

  • To monitor state and federal regulatory and legislative activity relevant to care of underserved patients; to solicit SIG member feedback in order to make recommendations to APhA regarding priorities related to care of underserved patients; and to engage SIG members to organize grassroots advocacy and public awareness campaigns.  

• Communications Committee

  • Lead SIG members in discussions related to care of underserved patients, utilizing the APhA Engage platform to encourage members to share ideas and resources; and promote SIG related activities and events through the Engage platform, website, and other APhA communications.  

• Education Committee

  • Identify educational gaps among SIG members in regards to caring for underserved patients and provide opportunities to bridge the education gap through CPE, webinars, toolkits, etc. 

Call for Committee Leaders and Members

The call for committee leaders and members has ended. Please contact the Coordinator if you are interested in volunteering your time.