MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Second-year students in the West Virginia University School of Pharmacy are holding a Family Wellness Night from 5:30 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 28, for parents and children of the Shack Neighborhood House in Pursglove.
While parents attend a CPR workshop, children will visit various health-education learning stations, including a puppet show explaining the work of a pharmacist and an information booth hosted by the West Virginia Poison Center (WVPC) to teach children about poison prevention.
The Family Wellness Night rounds out a four-week project by the WVU student pharmacists. The students designed and implemented health-education workshops to provide parents and guardians with patient education based on common health problems prevalent in today’s youth.
The goal of the project is to combine the Shack’s vision of creating new programs that promote cultural enrichment, healthy living, intellectual and spiritual growth and personal development with the objectives of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Healthy People 2020 campaign, a 10-year national campaign aimed to improve the health of all Americans.
“Our goal is to work with the parents group at the Shack to provide patient education based on their interests, as well as topics based on common problems pharmacists see in practice,” second-year WVU student pharmacist Rose Cheng of Morgantown said. “We really want to stress that pharmacists can provide medication information and that they’re available to talk with patients if they have any questions.”
To begin the four-week project, the student pharmacists received feedback from the parents group at the Shack in order to provide educational activities based on topics they wanted to learn about. Based on the surveys that were conducted, the students created three workshops: allergies and asthma, over-the-counter (OTC) medications and diabetes, nutrition and physical activities.
The allergies and asthma workshop took place on Jan. 24. Discussions included how to use an Epi-pen, how to use nasal spray, proper usage of inhalers and general information on how prescription medications can treat the symptoms of allergies.
At the OTC medication workshop on Feb. 7, parents learned the importance of reading labels, brand and generic medications that have the same active ingredient, information on medication dosing for children and the most accurate ways to administer liquid medication.
The Feb. 24 workshop stressed the importance of physical activity and provided information on diabetes, which is becoming more and more common younger children, as well as adults.
The student pharmacists were partnered with the Shack Neighborhood House through the WVU Center for Civic Engagement for their Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience course, which promotes service to the community.
For more information about the WVU School of Pharmacy, visit http://pharmacy.hsc.wvu.edu.