Education Research

students and faculty working together

new approaches to teaching how to deliver health services, in particular pharmacy care services

The department conducts research to determine, develop, and implement the most effective means of teaching how to deliver pharmacy care. This effort aims not only to improve the skills and knowledge of faculty and student pharmacists, but also to better educate patients and health care providers on topics such as effective use of medications, optimizing insurance coverage to cost-effectively access therapies, and positive health behavior change.

Examples of our research include:

  • Implementing and evaluating the effect of cross-cultural competency training (the ability to provide care and services to diverse patient populations), including psychometric analysis, to assess course impact on students’ perceived self-efficacy
  • Developing and evaluating a program that trained student pharmacists to deliver lectures to health professional students and current prescribers about cost-effective prescribing under the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit
  • Developing and evaluating a comprehensive training program for pharmacy students and other health professionals in the delivery of clinical interventions to help patients quit smoking (designed for national dissemination of the U.S. Public Health Service’s Clinical Practice Guideline for Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence); evaluating the curriculum’s effect on the perceived skills and self-efficacy of California pharmacy students; assessing the effectiveness of a related train-the-trainer program for pharmacy school faculty members on increasing their self-rated ability to teach tobacco-related content and the likelihood of their implementing the curriculum