Using a pharmacist-community health worker collaboration to address medication adherence barriers

Pharmacists are positioned to evaluate and educate patients regarding medication adherence; however, opportunities exist to leverage a collaborative approach in eliciting barriers encountered by patients, especially in minority groups. Community health workers (CHWs) are individuals from the communities who form relationships with patients and help increase their access to health care resources. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a collaboration between CHWs and pharmacists in identifying and addressing medication adherence barriers faced by hypertensive patients.

After receiving training in medication therapy management support, CHWs from the South East American Indian Council collaborated with students and pharmacists from the Center for Quality Medication Management at the University of Florida to identify and address medication adherence barriers encountered by hypertensive patients who were mainly Native American or black. The CHWs documented information from the patient interviews during the initial and follow-up visits. The team collaborated to identify intervention opportunities on the basis of the adherence barriers identified. Follow-up visits were conducted to measure progress.

Thirty-three hypertensive patients with or without diabetes were included in the study. The pharmacists, in partnership with the CHWs, offered 149 interventions related to medication adherence barriers. The most commonly identified barriers included forgetfulness, adverse effects, and knowledge concerns. By the final visits, 75.6% of the barriers related to antihypertensive medications and 63.9% of the barriers related to antidiabetic medications were resolved. In addition, a paired t test indicated a significant difference in the mean blood pressure values (P = 0.006 for systolic and P = 0.008 for diastolic) recorded at the initial (mean = 136/85.7 mm Hg) and final (mean = 130.1/81.2 mm Hg) visits.

The findings of this pilot project support the collaboration between pharmacists and CHWs to help improve medication adherence and patient outcomes. Additional research is recommended to validate these study findings.