Integration, Perceptions, and Implementation of Legislative Advocacy Within US Schools and Colleges of Pharmacy

Objective. To assess the current practices of US schools and colleges of pharmacy pertaining to teaching legislative advocacy; the engagement of staff, faculty, postgraduates, students, and administrators in legislative advocacy partnerships and activities; and their future goals for legislative advocacy involvement by academic pharmacy institutions.Methods. An electronic survey was distributed to deans of schools and colleges of pharmacy across the United States. Respondents were asked to complete 53 items about their school's involvement in, barriers to involvement in, and relative importance of involvement in legislative advocacy. Responses were evaluated using descriptive statistics.Results. The survey accrued responses from 48 of 143 (33%) schools and colleges of pharmacy. Sixteen percent of responding schools required a course on advocacy and approximately 50% offered an advocacy elective. A majority (58.8%) of responding institutions ranked their institution's involvement in legislative advocacy high (≥7 on a scale of 1-10), and 75.8% ranked the importance of legislative advocacy in external collaboration high. A majority of institutions (60%) ranked the importance of faculty, staff, and postgraduate roles in advocacy high; however, 42.3% did not rank involvement as strongly. Fifty percent of institutions plan to expand involvement in legislative advocacy.Conclusion. Respondents highly ranked the importance of legislative advocacy. Many perceived their institution's involvement as strong and having plans to expand. Moving forward, curricula and resource allocation should be reviewed to diminish the dissonance between an institution's perception of the importance of legislative advocacy and actual implementation of legislative advocacy components.