Expert: Diabetes Initiatives Led by Community Pharmacists, Students Drive Treatment Innovation

In a wide-ranging discussion with Pharmacy Times® at NACDS Total Store Expo, Jon Easter, professor of the practice and vice chair of practice advancement at the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy, provided an overview of his work involving phrmacist-led diabetes initiatives. Additionally, Easter explained how students are directly involved in the future of diabetes research and care.

Jon Easter, Professor of the Practice at UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy: So, [my name is] John Easter, I'm a professor of the practice and vice chair of practice advancement at University of North Carolina, Eshelman School of Pharmacy. And prior to that, I spent 20 years in the industry at various pharmaceutical companies, and bringing that policy experience to our school today.

Pharmacy Times®: Can you discuss your work in pharmacist-led diabetes initiatives?

Easter: Sure can. So, [we] have really been at this a long time, and so going back to my days in the pharmaceutical industry and with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), we were involved early on in projects like the Asheville Project, and then a way to try and replicate that through the Ten City Challenge. That was an early project we did, working in diabetes, and then transitioning into the University of North Carolina, diabetes is obviously something that we all need to be paying attention to, and better treatment and prevention. So, we launched a telehealth project a couple of years ago that was very successful in rural and underserved areas. And then the latest project, the Community-Based Value Initiative, has been really with a focus on diabetes, and taught us a lot about the role of the pharmacist there.

Pharmacy Times: Have there been any recent research developments regarding community pharmacy interventions that could lead to impacts in treatment?

Easter: So a lot of innovations within community pharmacy and wrapping that around diabetes interventions – absolutely. You know, part of it is pharmacists are well trained. They're highly functioning clinicians and do a great job. What we're doing on the innovation front right now is trying to figure out how best to implement these diabetes interventions within the pharmacy setting. We've been guilty in pharmacy of “one in a row” for a long time; so we can implement an intervention and it works well, but how do we scale it up? How do we replicate that? The interventions that we're really working on now is through implementation science and applying frameworks to be able to scale up these great interventions.

Pharmacy Times: What have you seen first-hand at UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy involving the future of community pharmacy in diabetes care?

Easter: So, I think, looking at it from a school lens, there are a lot of opportunities for us to get outside of pharmacy and bring and promote team-based care. And so that's something we're really working on. We launched a series of “catalyst events,” is what we called them; we brought payers in and providers in and other pharmacy communities, accountable care organizations in for a series of meetings to say, “what are we doing in diabetes, and how can we treat diabetes better through population health management?” And that firsthand, at the school, as a convener, really led to the initiatives that we'll be talking about later on today. I think it's around collaboration and team-based care, that's really what we're seeing, and we need to promote that to position pharmacy for success in the future.