The Role of Pharmacists in Health Promotion

Abstract

Health promotion is regarded as instrumental in addressing the growing public healthcare concerns. It is recognized as instrumental in disease prevention and control. Health promotion can also be used as an instrumental tool to address the growing cases of non-communicable diseases. Health promotion is regarded as effective in disease prevention and control because it emphasizes the need for individuals to be in control over their own health.   However, despite the significance of health promotion in disease prevention and control, it remains largely underutilized. One of the reasons why health promotion is underutilized is because of the lack of adequate healthcare personnel to take on health promotion initiatives. Expanding the role of pharmacists to include more involvement in health promotion initiatives can help to fill this gap. Some of the measures and initiatives pharmacists can get involved in are being part of building public health policies, creating supportive environments, providing health education, being in community action, ensuring medication safety, and disease prevention and control. To enable pharmacists to perform these measures effectively, there is a need to address the existing barriers and challenges. This will lead to positive outcomes and ensure pharmacists perform their roles effectively to enhance health promotion. Keywords: health promotion, pharmacists, health education, disease prevention and control, immunization