Advice and leaflets on both health issues and topics such as welfare benefits can be successfully distributed through community pharmacies, a project in the London Borough of Croydon has found.
Training for pharmacy assistants has been identified as a key factor in the success of the advice campaigns. The project is to be continued for a second year.
The "Healthy Croydon" project started in October, 1998 (PJ, October 13, 1998, p656). Twenty pharmacies were equipped with notice-boards and leaflet display stands and 10 campaigns were run over the next year covering topics such as smoking cessation, asthma, welfare benefits and energy efficiency grants. A further five pharmacies joined the project during its first year.
Mrs Jo Bradbury (Healthy Croydon project officer) told The Journal on January 11 that an evaluation of the project had shown it to be successful in achieving its aims for the year. The council had made funding available to continue the project from October, 1999, and a further pharmacy had been recruited to take part.
She said that there had been considerable variation in the number of leaflets given out for each campaign and the number of subsequent inquiries made to pharmacists and onward referrals to other agencies. She said that this variation was "inevitable".
The campaigns with the highest uptake of leaflets and inquiries had been "traditional" health related topics such as smoking cessation, asthma and head lice, Mrs Bradbury said.
Although smaller numbers of leaflets on other subjects had been distributed, she said that the agencies dealing with subjects such as welfare benefits, housing and energy efficiency grants were pleased with the number of referrals they had received under the scheme. For example, 85 applications had been made for energy efficiency grants as a result of a campaign in December, 1998, of which 14 had been eligible to receive grants. Mrs Bradbury said that she was intending to retain a mixture of campaign subjects during the second year of the project.
In addition, campaigns would be co-ordinated with those running through general medical practitioners' surgeries.
One of the key factors for the success of the individual campaigns had been the training of pharmacy staff, Mrs Bradbury said.
In the initial phase of the project, she had relied upon pharmacists to train their staff, but this had not always happened due to time pressures. Subsequently, she had taken time to talk to pharmacy assistants, as well as pharmacists, during her visits to the pharmacies. She had also organised a training session for pharmacy assistants for a campaign on firework safety and this had led to a greatly increased response rate for the campaign.
Two more training sessions were planned.