Transforming Diabetes Interventions Into Sustainable Programs for Pharmacy

Jon Easter, Professor of Practice; Vice Chair, Practice Advancement at UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, sat down with Drug Topics at the 2024 National Association of Chain Drug Stores Total Store Expo to discuss the best ways to support community pharmacists in building effective, sustainable diabetes interventions in community pharmacy settings.

To scale up diabetes interventions in the pharmacy, sustainability is key. | Image credit: Chinnapong - stock.adobe.com

Drug Topics: What key factors are essential for translating research on diabetes care into effective, sustainable programs?

Jon Easter: The key point here is, we’ve been doing diabetes interventions in pharmacy for a long time—and we’re really good at it. We achieve better outcomes: We see lower costs and we see better clinical outcomes.

What we have to translate that into now is sustainable programs. How do we integrate that into workflow? How do we create online training? How do we help pharmacists pivot to these new types of models in a sustainable way? That then allows predictable outcomes, and payers to come along to show that we can scale these [programs] up in a large-scale fashion. We can also facilitate sustainability, which means reimbursement for services, collaborations, partnerships, and other things to support that.

READ MORE: Mediterranean, DASH Diets May Lower Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in T1D

Drug Topics: What are some of the biggest challenges that are encountered when trying to implement sustainable diabetes care programs in pharmacies?

Easter: I think it really starts with readiness. Pharmacists are well-trained, especially in the community pharmacy setting. They are very busy, they’re very focused on that dispensing model; being able to support them through a transition, and integrate these new services into workflow, providing resources and personnel to be able to help them pivot towards more and different and more diverse services, is very important. Providing that readiness infrastructure is important.

And then it comes to partnerships with payers, partnerships with at-risk providers, so that they will come along and reward pharms through partnerships and reimbursements for their services.

The 2024 National Association of Chain Drug Stores Total Store Expo was held August 17 to August 19, 2024, in Boston, Massachusetts. Click here for more of our coverage.