A Rapid Realist Review of the Role of Community Pharmacy in the Public Health Response to COVID-19

Conference:

SAPC ASM 2021 - virtual

Talk Code:

P1.15.06

Presenter:

Ian Maidment

Twitter:

@maidment_dr

Co-authors:

Emma Young, Maura MacPhee, Andrew Booth, Hadar Zaman, Juanita Breen, Andrea Hilton, Tony Kelly, Geoff Wong

Author institutions:

Aston University, University of Sheffield, University of British Columbia, University of Bradford, University of Tasmania, University of Hull, University of Oxford

Problem

Community pharmacy has remained accessible to the general public providing essential services despite significant pressures during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have successfully expanded the influenza vaccination programme and are now supporting the delivery of the COVID-19 vaccination.

This rapid realist review aimed to understand how community pharmacy can most effectively deliver essential and advanced services, with a focus on vaccination, during the pandemic and in the future.

Approach

An embryonic programme theory was generated using four diverse and complementary documents plus project team expertise. Academic databases, preprint services and grey literature were searched and screened for documents meeting our inclusion criteria.

Data was extracted from 103 documents to develop and refine a programme theory. Our analysis generated 13 context-mechanism-outcome (CMO) configurations explaining when, why and how community pharmacy can support public health vaccination campaigns, maintain essential services and capitalise on opportunities for expanded and sustainable public health service roles.

The views of stakeholders including pharmacy users, pharmacists, pharmacy teams and other healthcare professionals (e.g. GPs) were sought throughout the study to refine the initial explanatory configurations.

Findings

Community pharmacy has been able to offer key services, including vaccination, during the pandemic. We provide key recommendations for decision makers to optimise this key public health function.

Consequences

Decision makers must endorse, articulate and support a clear public health role for community pharmacy.

Overall, policy and practice must focus on the clinical rather than the retail role of community pharmacy.

Submitted by:

Ian Maidment

Funding acknowledgement:

Jointly funded by UKRI and NIHR COV0176. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, UKRI or the Department of Health and Social Care.