Pharmacists’ Impact on Public Health & Community Well-being

Posted on Sep 11, 2025 in Other university degrees and diplomas

Social Pharmacy: Role in Public Health

Social pharmacy is the discipline dealing with the role of medicines from social, scientific, and humanistic perspectives.

Scope of Social Pharmacy in Public Health

Health financing: To protect vulnerable populations from financial hardships, pharmacists ensure cost-effective healthcare through the rational use of medical products and modern technologies. Studies show pharmacists can substantially increase healthcare savings by reducing medication-related problems and providing cheaper alternatives or suggesting medicines covered by insurance.

Medical products, vaccines, and technologies: With an increasingly wide range of new and analogous medical products, vaccines, and technologies, pharmacy practice continues to broaden. Pharmacists’ roles include managing medical products, vaccines, and medical devices, especially those demanding special knowledge regarding uses and risks. Pharmacists are responsible for ensuring the efficacy, integrity, and security of medical products, devices, and vaccines to safeguard patient health.

Health services: As medicine experts, pharmacists deliver effective, safe, and quality medicines and services to achieve optimal health outcomes. Competency and up-to-date knowledge are core to tailoring information and advice to patients.

Millennium Development Goals

  • Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
  • Achieve universal primary education
  • Promote gender equality and empower women
  • Reduce child mortality
  • Improve maternal health
  • Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
  • Ensure environmental sustainability
  • Develop a global partnership for development

Pharmacists’ Role in Public Health

  1. Review Prescriptions: Students should professionally handle prescriptions, checking for completeness and correctness. Contact prescribers for clarifications and corrections, offering suggestions.
  2. Dispense Prescription / Non-Prescription Medicines: Students should dispense scheduled drugs/medicines as per the Drug & Cosmetics Act and Rules. Non-prescription medicines (over-the-counter drugs) should be dispensed judiciously.
  3. Provide Patient Counseling / Education: Students should effectively counsel/educate patients/caretakers about prescription/non-prescription medicines and other health-related issues, using oral and written communication skills and techniques.
  4. Hospital and Community Pharmacy Management: Students should manage the drug distribution system as per hospital pharmacy policies, good community pharmacy practice, and regulatory agency recommendations. Manage procurement, inventory, and distribution of medicines in hospital/community pharmacy settings.
  5. Expertise on Medications
  6. Proficiency in Drugs and Pharmaceuticals
  7. Entrepreneurship and Leadership
  8. Deliver Primary and Preventive Healthcare Services
  9. Professional, Ethical, and Legal Practice
  10. Engage in Continuing Professional Development

Defining Health

Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, and the ability to lead a socially and economically productive life.

Dimensions of Health

The concept of health refers to many types or dimensions such as:

  1. Physical Health Dimensions:
    • A state in which every cell and every organ is functioning at optimal capacity and in perfect harmony with the rest of the body.
    • Refers to perfect functioning of the body.
    • Indicates that all body organs are structurally and functionally normal.
  2. Mental Health Dimensions: Mental health is “a state of balance between the individual and the surrounding world, a state of harmony between oneself and others, a coexistence between the realities of the self and that of other people and that of the environment.”
  3. Social Health Dimensions: Social well-being implies “Quality and quantity of an individual’s interpersonal ties and the extent of involvement with the community.” Social health considers the individual member of society and their health status in relation to social conditions.
  4. Spiritual Health: Refers to that part of the individual which reaches out and strives for meaning and purpose in life.
  5. Emotional Health: Mental health can be seen as “Knowing” or “Cognition”, while Emotional Health refers to “Feeling.”
  6. Other Dimensions: Philosophical, Cultural, Socioeconomic, Environmental, Educational, Nutritional, Curative, and Preventive.

National Health Mission (NHM)

The National Health Mission (NHM) was launched by the Government of India in 2013, subsuming the National Rural Health Mission and National Urban Health Mission. Extended in March 2018 to continue until March 2020. NHM components include Maternal Health, Neonatal and Child Health, Reproductive Health, Adolescent Health, and disease prevention (Tuberculosis, cardiovascular diseases, etc.). NHM facilities are promoted through advertisements, posters, radio, social media, and newspapers.

Aims of NHM:

  • Improve the health conditions of the people.
  • Raise awareness about adolescent health and harmful habits.
  • Promote disease prevention.
  • Improve hygienic conditions.
  • Raise awareness about natural sources.
  • Support population stabilization.
  • Provide essential health facilities to those in need.

NHM is divided into two parts:

  • National Rural Health Mission.
  • National Urban Health Mission.

Demography

Demography is the systematic/periodic study of population growth.

Demographic Cycle

  1. High stationary (first stage): High birth rate and high death rate, no change in population size.
  2. Early expanding (second stage): Death rate declines, birth rate remains unchanged, initial increase in population.
  3. Late expanding (third stage): Birth rate declines while the death rate continues to decrease, continued increase in population.
  4. Low stationary (fourth stage): Low birth rate and low death rate, stability in population.
  5. Declining (fifth stage): Birth rate is lower than the death rate, decrease in population.

Family Planning

Definition/Introduction: Family planning is the practice of controlling the number of children one has and maintaining the intervals between their births, particularly by means of contraception or voluntary sterilization.

Aims of Family Planning

  • Control population growth
  • Improve physical, mental, and social health
  • Reduce hunger and poverty
  • Reduce maternal mortality
  • Reduce infant mortality and morbidity
  • Improve reproductive health
  • Decrease incidence of STIs
  • Improve educational attainment

Pharmacists’ Role in Mother and Child Health

Pharmacists supply various contraceptive options and prescribe/initiate emergency contraception. They also:

  • Educate parents and supply vitamins and nutritional supplements, including folic acid and iron supplements, and promote cessation of alcohol and nicotine use.
  • Recommend drug therapy, dosages, and duration of essential medicines during pregnancy and advise on drugs for the developing embryo.
  • Advise on accessibility of critical medications in labor and delivery and provide required sterile medication products during delivery.
  • Support breastfeeding (when replacement feeding is acceptable, feasible, affordable, sustainable, and safe; avoidance of all breastfeeding by HIV-infected mothers is recommended).
  • Supply effective treatments for children, including drug therapy (Oral Rehydration Salts and Zinc therapy), and ensure the quality, purity, and potency of medicinal products.
  • Participate in health programs and make parents aware of disease conditions, providing proper precautions.

Risks of Substituted Milks for Infants

  • Substituted milk can sometimes cause severe allergic reactions in infants, leading to eczema and rashes.
  • Some infants cannot digest substitute milk, causing diarrhea and increasing the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). A lack of nutritional value can also hinder proper growth and development.
  • Insufficient nutrition can also impair immune development, increasing susceptibility to infections and diseases such as diabetes, pneumonia, obesity, leukemia, and respiratory illnesses.

Immunity

Immunity is defined as the ability of the immune system to produce an immune response against disease-causing organisms like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other foreign agents.

Types of Immunity

  1. Innate Immunity: Non-specific defense present at birth, providing barriers to the entry of foreign agents.
  2. Acquired Immunity: Pathogen-specific immunity characterized by memory. The body produces a primary response (low intensity) upon first encounter and a highly intensified secondary or anamnestic response upon subsequent encounters.

Tobacco Use and Health Risks

Smoking increases carbon monoxide (CO) content in blood and reduces the concentration of heme-bound oxygen, causing oxygen deficiency. Smoked tobacco products include cigarettes, cigars, bidis, and more. Chewed tobacco products include chewing tobacco, snuff, and dip. Tobacco addiction is caused by a dependency on nicotine and the habits associated with smoking or chewing tobacco. While some use tobacco as a stimulant, high amounts can lead to severe health problems.

Vaccines

A vaccine is a chemical substance or biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity against any disease.

Types of Vaccines

The development of more effective and safer vaccines, as well as vaccines for more serious diseases, is ongoing. Vaccine formulations affect how they are used, stored, and administered. There are four types of vaccines, categorized by the antigen (inactive microbes, toxins, surface protein) used in their preparation:

  1. Live Attenuated Vaccine (LAV): Prepared by weakening pathogens (virus or bacteria) under laboratory conditions. Live microorganisms provide continual antigenic stimulation, giving sufficient time for memory cell production. They cause no or very mild disease. Example: Tuberculosis (BCG), Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV), Measles, Rotavirus, Yellow Fever.
  2. Inactivated Vaccine (Killed Vaccine): Prepared by killing antigens through physical or chemical processes. These killed organisms do not pose a risk of inducing the disease and are considered more stable than LAV vaccines. Example: Whole-cell Pertussis, Inactivated Polio Virus (IPV).
  3. Subunit Vaccine (Purified Antigen): Contains the antigenic parts (disease-causing portion) of the antigen. Like inactivated vaccines, it does not contain live components of the antigen, only antigenic parts like surface protein, conjugated chemicals, polysaccharide, etc. Example: Acellular Pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, Pneumococcal, Hepatitis B.
  4. Toxoid Vaccine (Inactivated Toxoid): Based on the toxin produced by certain bacteria (e.g., tetanus or diphtheria). The released toxin is used to prepare the vaccine, and these parts are necessary to elicit a protective immune response and produce antibodies. Example: Tetanus Toxoid (TT), Diphtheria Toxoid.

Water Pollution

Any undesirable changes in water properties by physical, chemical, and biological methods are considered water pollution. Human beings have been abusing water bodies by disposing of all kinds of waste into them.

Sources of Water Pollution

  • Household wastes (vegetable peels, rotten materials, and other food wastes).
  • Industrial wastes drained into rivers or water sources.
  • Chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Effects of Water Pollution on Health

  • Polluted water causes metabolism defects and diseases like gastroenteritis, diarrhea, cholera, and dysentery.
  • It also affects brain activity and can cause severe brain-related problems.
  • Many infectious disease agents are transmitted through contaminated water (typhoid, giardiasis, amoebiasis, ascariasis, and hookworm).
  • Polluted water affects normal growth and development and induces infant mortality.

Air Pollution

Sources of Air Pollution

  • Smog (smoke and fog) containing nitrogen oxides, which combine with other air pollutants. Smog causes respiratory difficulties such as asthma, coughing, and wheezing in children.
  • Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and aerosol sprays damage the ozone layer.

Health Effects of Air Pollution

  1. Air pollution causes serious long-term health conditions, including heart disease, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases such as emphysema.
  2. It can also cause long-term damage to nerves, brain, kidneys, liver, and other organs, sometimes causing birth defects.
  3. Acid Rain: Damages monuments like the Taj Mahal. Pollutants like sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide gases react with water vapor to form sulfuric acid and nitric acid, which fall with rain, making it acidic.

Noise Pollution

Noise is undesired, high-level sound. We associate loud sounds with pleasure and entertainment, not realizing that noise causes psychological and physiological disorders. Brief exposure to extremely high sound levels (150 dB or more) may damage eardrums, permanently impairing hearing.

Sources of Noise Pollution

  • Industrial noise from machines working at high speed and intensity.
  • Outdoor sources such as road traffic, jet planes, garbage trucks, and construction equipment.

Health Effects of Noise Pollution

  • Long-term exposure to loud sound causes Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL) and sleep disorders.
  • Exposure to loud noise can cause high blood pressure, heart disease, and stress.
  • Trouble communicating.
  • Disturbance of the balancing system.

Solid Waste Disposal

Solid wastes refer to all discarded materials that go into the trash. Municipal solid wastes include discarded materials from homes, offices, stores, schools, and hospitals, which are collected and disposed of by the municipality. These typically comprise paper, food waste, plastics, glass, metals, rubber, leather, textiles, and more.

Sewage Treatment Plants

Human excreta is a major component of wastewater. This municipal wastewater, also known as sewage, contains large amounts of organic matter and microbes, many of which are pathogenic. Before disposal, sewage is treated in Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) to reduce its polluting potential. Treatment is carried out in two stages by heterotrophic microbes naturally present in the sewage.