Preventing misuse of OTC medications by older adults
Lead Researcher: Michelle Chui, PharmD, PhD; UW-Madison School of Pharmacy
What is the focus of your research?
The goal of our current AHRQ funded research grant is to prevent the misuse of over-the-counter medications by older adults by implementing a system-redesign intervention in community pharmacies.
How has stakeholder engagement helped your project so far?
We just completed the first part of our research project in which we engaged in a participatory design process with both older adults and community pharmacy stakeholders. We met with stakeholder groups 6 times over a period of 6 months. Stakeholders helped us to define the problem to be addressed, generate solutions, evaluate solutions, and refine the final intervention. Also during this time we met with the CARDS group twice. They provided feedback on the solutions that the stakeholder groups generated and also helped us to identify the signage that will be used in conjunction with the intervention.
What is a lesson you’ve learned from your stakeholder engagement work?
It is critically important to have stakeholders involved from the very beginning of a project. We learned during the very first meeting that our original idea for an intervention would not address the issue that issue that pharmacy staff thought was the most important.
Services provided by WINRS to the research team:
- Two CARDS meetings: one to review solutions generated by our stakeholder groups and another to discuss advertising and signage in the pharmacy