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PREPARING OUR GRADUATES IN
DISEASE MANAGEMENT AND WELLNESS
The Division of Clinical, Social and Administrative Sciences combines the basic sciences with models and theories that provide the foundation of a pharmaceutical education. This education promotes patient health and overall quality of life through encouraging effective drug use.
The Division consists of pharmacy administration and pharmacy practice—two distinct, but complementary, sections that collaborate to improve students’ quality of education, along with the lives of the people they serve every day.
The main mission of the pharmacy administration section is to educate students in pharmacoeconomics, mental health-substance abuse and health care ethics.
The pharmacy practice section centers on factors that affect patient health: wellness and disease prevention, pain management and palliative care, diabetes self-medication, tobacco cessation, children’s and geriatric health, asthma education and medication and infectious disease management.
Our Division also includes the Academic Research Center for Pharmacy Care, which was launched in the Fall of 2002. The Center strives to educate students while:
- Developing and implementing pharmaceutical care and wellness programs for the University, surrounding communities and the medically underserved
- Partnering with clinical ambulatory and primary care preceptors to encourage them to provide similar wellness programs in their communities and develop exportable role model programs for their pharmacies
- Measuring the impact of services in the various populations with which the Center has interacted through community-based clinical research
The Center is a staple in the community and has conducted over 28,000 individual health risk assessments and disease management screenings on campus, in neighboring communities, and across the western Pennsylvania region from October 2002 through May 2008. The number of clients screened has increased year by year as the need for pharmacist involvement in health care initiatives has been identified.
Additionally, the Duquesne Medication Management program, implemented in the Fall of 2007, provides an innovative approach to delivering medication therapy management to indigent and underserved populations in the Pittsburgh area. Throughout their time in this program, students follow families from diverse backgrounds in a hands-on learning experience that focuses on the issues and responsibilities of being a culturally competent practitioner. This project will be fully implemented in the Fall of 2009, which will allow us to serve 150 area families.
These and other innovative projects underway within the Division of Clinical, Social and Administrative Sciences reflect the Division’s emphasis on improving the quality of education for our students and the quality of the people’s lives we touch every day.
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