Pharmacy Resources

Pharmacists play a crucial role in reducing the risk for heart disease and stroke in the United States. Pharmacists can use these resources and tools to help improve patient care. Public health professionals can learn about effective strategies to partner with pharmacists.

Pharmacy Guides

These guides include resources and information for pharmacists about their role in team-based care for patients.

Best Practices Guide for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention
This guide describes and summarizes scientific evidence behind 8 effective strategies for lowering high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, including collaborative practice agreements between pharmacists and health care providers and medication therapy management.

• Pharmacy: Collaborative Practice Agreements to Enable Collaborative Drug Therapy Management
• Community Pharmacists and Medication Therapy Management

Using the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process to Manage High Blood Pressure: A Resource Guide for Pharmacists Cdc-pdf[PDF-633K]
The Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process is a way to prevent and manage high blood pressure through team-based care. This guide provides information about current resources and emerging practices as well as tools and examples that pharmacists can use to help improve health outcomes associated with cardiovascular disease.

Creating Community-Clinical Linkages Between Community Pharmacists and Physicians: A Pharmacy Guide Cdc-pdf[PDF-1.1M] | High-Resolution Cdc-pdf[PDF-6.4M]
This guide describes a framework for creating linkages between community pharmacists and physicians that benefit community collaborators and the patients they serve. This resource serves as a supplement to Community-Clinical Linkages for the Prevention and Control of Chronic Diseases: A Practitioner’s Guide Cdc-pdf[ PDF-1.6M].

Advancing Team-Based Care Through Collaborative Practice Agreements Cdc-pdf[PDF – 4 MB]
This resource is designed to advance team-based care by empowering community pharmacists and prescribers to develop formalized relationships through collaborative practice agreements.

Collaborative Practice Agreements and Pharmacists’ Patient Care Services Resources: A Resource for Pharmacists Cdc-pdf[PDF-308K]
This resource is part of a set of guides that help put science into practice by including strategies and case examples of how pharmacists can better serve patients through collaborative practice agreements and collaborative drug therapy management. See the complete set of guides.

Medication Adherence: Action Steps for Health Benefit Managers Cdc-pdf[PDF-173M]External
This guide provides a call to action for pharmacy benefit managers to implement evidence- and practice-based medication adherence strategies that improve blood pressure control, cholesterol management, and smoking cessation. Additional resources and references for each action step are included.

Stories From the Field

• Advancing the Role of Pharmacists by Using Collaborative Practice Agreements and the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process to Manage High Blood Pressure Cdc-pdf[PDF – 475 KB]
  CDC and the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors are working with pharmacists and state public health practitioners to advance the pharmacist’s role in helping patients manage high blood pressure through team-based care.
• HealthPartners Pharmacy Program Cdc-pdf[PDF – 714 KB]
  Clinical pharmacists help patients with hypertension address their blood pressure and other health concerns at 16 HealthPartners primary care clinics in Minnesota. This medication therapy management program uses the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process to deliver comprehensive care.
• Michigan Medicine and Meijer Pharmacy Program Cdc-pdf[PDF – 604 KB]
  Michigan Medicine is addressing hypertension by embedding ambulatory care pharmacists into all of their primary care clinics and several partnering retail pharmacy locations. Patients with hypertension are receiving coordinated care in this program, which is consistent with the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process.
• University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Pharmacy Program Cdc-pdf[PDF – 782 KB]
  The University of California, San Diego serves patients with hypertension through a pharmacist-physician collaborative practice in three family medicine clinics. Using the Pharmacists’ Patient Care Process, pharmacists collaborate with physicians and patients to treat hypertension.

Videos

• Help Patients Take Blood Pressure MedicineExternal
  One in four new prescriptions for high blood pressure medicines is never filled. The Million Hearts® initiative created this video for health care professionals, pharmacists, and other members of a patient’s health care team to improve medication adherence. Also available in SpanishExternal.

• How You Can Team Up with PatientsExternal
  This video from the Million Hearts^® initiative includes ways to start the conversation with patients to help them manage high blood pressure and other health conditions.

More Information

• Patient Outreach ToolsExternal—American Pharmacists Association
• Web Resources for Pharmacy Professionals Cdc-pdf[PDF-2M]External—U.S. National Library of Medicine