Mythical millions
About a month ago, the editorial team was discussing the origins of the “six million” figure — the number of people in Britain who are said to visit a pharmacy every day. Nobody knew where the figure emerged from, or on what evidence it was based, so we decided to commission an article to trace the source. The article, this week’s News
feature (p467), is no more revealing, although it shows that
the figure has been used with great authority by successive governments
and the profession
for as long as 20 years.
The article is of considerable value, however, in that it shows how hard
it would be to determine an accurate figure of the number of people who
go into a pharmacy every day for a whole range of reasons. And it also
begs the question — does it matter?
What evidence there is suggests that, although six million is likely
to be an overestimate of the number of people who converse with a pharmacist
every day, it may well be a reasonable reflection of the number of people
who go into a pharmacy, for whatever reason. In addition, it is certainly
a huge underestimate of the number of people who pass a pharmacy window
every day.
What these different figures do reveal is that pharmacies and pharmacists
have extraordinary opportunities to deliver public health messages, some
of which are exploited, some of which are not.
It could be argued that every pharmacy window represents an excellent
opportunity to tell passers-by something about their health. In The
Journal of 10 April (p443) we carried an announcement from Developing Patient
Partnerships and the Consumer Health Information Centre about a competition
for a window display used to encourage men to visit pharmacies for health
advice in a campaign that will be launched on 29 April.
This is something that could be built upon: once a month a different
organisation could support a window campaign and make awards for the
most powerful images and messages displayed by pharmacies. The Journal
would be happy to support such initiatives, give them advance publicity
and publish details of the winners. Successful campaigns in one part
of Britain could be copied in another and, whether it is one million,
six million or 12 million people who benefit, health advice campaigns
are always valuable.
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Seamlessly tackling chronic disease
Pharmacy is playing a major role in a new scheme in Salford that is seamlessly integrating health and social services in an attempt to tackle chronic disease in a run-down area. Although the service has yet to be evaluated, anecdotal evidence suggests a promising outcome (Vision for pharmacy, p473). We
commend the initiative, which demonstrates how local pharmaceutical services
can be used to improve public health.
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Pharmaceutical Journal