The College of Pharmacy at Northeast Ohio Medical University won seven national awards at the annual Script Your Future Medication Adherence Team Challenge.

The Medication Adherence Team Challenge is a two-month competition to engage health-profession students and faculty across the nation to develop ideas, events and initiatives to raise awareness about the importance of medication adherence.

Out of the 66 health care educational institutions that participated in the challenge, only four schools won awards.

Besides NEOMED, other winners included the University of Charleston School of Pharmacy, the University of the Sciences Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy.

Script Your Future challenges participants to find ways to talk with patients and public about the importance of taking medications as their proscribed.

“The Script Your Future Medication Adherence Team Challenge continues to be an innovative method for our future healthcare professionals to engage with their local communities,” said Lucinda Maine, executive vice president and CEO at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, in a press release. “The broad social media outreach and events held in these communities provide essential information and strategies for patients to improve their medication adherence and ultimately their health outcomes.”

NEOMED won the Health Disparities and Under-represented Community Outreach award. NEOMED provided examples including a Night of Hope for refugees in Akron, a Heroin Epidemic community presentation, seminars in three senior apartments and a medical trip to Honduras, reaching over 2,400 patients.

The Communication and Media Outreach Award also went to NEOMED. The team produced two videos — one highlighting Script Your Future with a mannequin challenge and the other, a music video that had the tone of the Chainsmokers’ song “Closer” while still promoting medication adherence.

“The main goal was to reach as many patients as possible … to talk about the importance to medication adherence,” said Jackie Boyle, assistant professor for Community Pharmacy Innovations at NEOMED. “I think the thing that our student group has done successfully, not only this year but the last couple years, is leverage social media — to be able to spread the word even more widely than we could geographically.”

With technology and social media, it’s easier than ever to reach patients who are not necessarily near, she said.

Kent State University and NEOMED signed an agreement for students pursing a career in pharmacy to have an accelerated program to complete their bachelor’s and Doctor of Pharmacy degree in seven years, rather than the usual eight years.

Boyle said she hopes NEOMED’s outreach could be bigger and better by partnering with other colleges like Kent State. She wants to focus on helping underserved communities — where patients may not have a health care provider — get access for their medical needs.

Ray Padilla is the academics reporter, contact him at [email protected].