UMES SOP and Wicomico Day School Win 2nd Place in National Competition

(L-R) Third-year pharmacy students Emily P. Biskach and Raliat Ola-Dauda and faculty advisers Mrs. Nancy Rodriquez-Weller and Dr. Miriam Purnell received 2nd place honors from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy’s “Pharm4Me Innovation Challenge.” The UMES team partnered with Salisbury’s Wicomico Day School to introduce middle school students to pharmacy careers.

A team of UMES SOP faculty and students and Wicomico Day School (WDS) won second place in the National Pharm4Me Innovation Challenge. The purpose of the competition, which is sponsored by OptumRx and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP), is to allow middle/high school students and current student pharmacists to work together to identify innovative solutions to medication or healthrelated problems in their communities. The UMES/WDS team was the only winning team that included middle school students. The 1st place winner was Washington State University/North Central High School and the 3rd place winner was University of Kentucky/Lafayette & Boone Co. high schools.

The UMES/WDS student team consisted of two UMES SOP students in their final year (Emily Biskach and Raliat Ola-Dauda) and twelve 7th and 8th graders at Wicomico Day School in Salisbury, MD. UMES SOP faculty members, Dr. Miriam Purnell and Mrs. Nancy Rodriguez-Weller, served as advisors to the team and designed a month long curriculum for the Innovations Challenge. The WDS students began with an overview of the Innovations Challenge and did background research on the pharmacy profession to better understand the role that pharmacists can play in impacting the health of their communities. They also learned about specific areas of pharmacy practice and played a pharmacy jeopardy game to test their knowledge. Subsequent sessions focused on exploring health issues in their community that might be of interest. Ultimately, the students chose high cholesterol as their area of focus.

The students spent time researching high cholesterol, including how many people are affected by it in the US, its risk factors, and treatment. They proposed the “Lowering Cholesterol Education Project, which was an inter-professional health outreach event focusing on educating patients and those at risk for high cholesterol about nutrition, exercise, and medications. They recommended three stations: nutrition, exercise, and pharmacy. At the nutrition station, a chef or dietician would teach the patients about how to prepare delicious and nutritious meals. At the exercise station, a physical education teacher, fitness instructor, or personal trainer would demonstrate exercises that can help lower or prevent high cholesterol. At the pharmacy station, a pharmacist would inform about different medications and supplements used to treat high cholesterol, their side effects, and possible drug interactions. The students also developed three separate brochures to be used at each station. While the faculty advisors and pharmacy students provided guidance and insight, the middle school students researched information for the brochures and created them using Microsoft Publisher. Their submission for the contest included the brochures as well as a PowerPoint presentation outlining their proposed solution.

The middle school students stated that they learned several things from doing the innovation challenge: 1) how nutrition and exercise affects high cholesterol, 2) medications used to treat high cholesterol, 3) problem solving skills, 4) pharmaceutical terms and how to use them to educate the public, and 5) the role that pharmacists play in keeping the people in our community healthy. Additionally, one 8th grade student stated that the project peaked her interest in pharmacy as a career. As second place winners in this national competition, all students received certificates for their participation and both schools received plaques. WDS also received $500 to support STEM programs and UMES received a $300 travel grant to accept their plaque at the AACP National Meeting in Chicago, IL in July 2019.

Dr. Purnell accepts plaque on behalf of the UMES at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Annual Meeting in July 2019. (L-R) OptumRx representative, Dr. Todd Sorenson, AACP President, and Dr. Purnell.