Summary: This blog post explores how pharmacists play a key role in reducing health disparities through equitable healthcare solutions.
The Pharmacist’s Impact:
Reducing Health Disparities
Pharmacists play a critical role in reducing health disparities by eliminating care barriers through evidence-based interventions, expanding pharmaceutical access, and fostering community partnerships.
Disparities across sectors—education, economic opportunities, and healthcare—shape access to essential resources, with social determinants of health (SDOH) driving inequities in care and outcomes.
In healthcare, this means moving beyond simply acknowledging health disparities to actively ensuring all individuals have access to the care and resources they need for optimal health.
Despite ongoing efforts to promote equity in medicine, health disparities persist worldwide. In many cases, limited healthcare access in economically disadvantaged communities has led to avoidable, unjust differences in care and health outcomes.
This blog post explores how pharmacists play a key role in reducing health disparities through equitable healthcare solutions.
Additionally, it highlights experience-based insights from our Founder, showcasing how targeted, pharmacist-led strategies bridge healthcare gaps and support outcomes.
What Are Health Disparities?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), health disparities are preventable differences that affect an individual’s health outcome (e.g., mortality, health status, life expectancy, etc.) or the person’s ability to achieve optimal health.
Health disparities are usually influenced by a person’s social or economic status, environment, and geographic location.
It is necessary to distinguish between health equity, health disparities, and health inequities to understand health disparities.
Health disparities are caused by health inequities, defined as differences in health outcomes and distribution of health resources that stem from unfair and unjust systemic policies and practices that create barriers to health opportunities.
Health equity, on the other hand, refers to the state in which everyone has a just and fair opportunity to achieve their highest state of health regardless of social or economic differences or other factors that affect a person’s access to care or health outcomes.
Even though equity is one of several goals of social development, health inequities continue to rise in “small but substantial proportions of countries.”
In pharmacy practice, health disparities affect patients’ ability to obtain medication counseling, prescription medications, medication refills, and other essential pharmaceutical services.
What Drives Health Disparities?
A key driver of health disparities is social determinants of health (SDOH)—the economic, social, and environmental factors that shape healthcare access. These factors include:
Education Inequality.
According to the CDC, there is an education-health disparity link where the likelihood of individuals experiencing health risks like obesity and intentional and unintentional injury increases with low levels of education.
Compared to people with a low level of education, individuals with a higher level of education are able to access and understand basic health information that helps them make appropriate health decisions.
Poverty.
One of the social determinants of health is poverty, which increases an individual’s health risks.
For example, someone experiencing poverty may have limited access to food, clean water, and a sanitary environment, all of which may exponentially increase the spread of diseases and compromise the person’s immune system.
Access to healthcare is also limited in rural communities, as seen in a study where Americans living in rural areas are more likely to die from certain health risks compared to those in urban communities.
Lack of Healthcare Access.
Lack of healthcare access or even poor quality of healthcare may result from several factors, including social determinants of health like culture, education, finance, etc., implicit bias on the part of the healthcare provider, and stigmatization, among others.
This lack of quality access to healthcare may result in differences in the health outcomes of affected individuals (health disparity).
Individual Factors.
Individual factors, including lifestyle and healthy behaviors, may result in health disparities because a person’s behavior toward their health shapes their general health and well-being.
Unfortunately, some behaviors are riskier than others.
For example, the health outcome of a smoker may be different from that of non-smoker that has the same health condition.
Environmental Conditions.
Environmental conditions like poor air quality may significantly affect an individual’s health status and outcome, increasing health disparity.
Pharmacy Strategies for
Reducing Health Disparities
Pharmacists reduce health disparities in respective communities in different ways. Technological advancements and pharmacists’ expanding roles have made this possible.
Here are some proven strategies pharmacists use to reduce health disparities:
Addressing Cultural Incompetence.
Cultural competence is needed, especially for pharmacists who often have direct access to patients. It involves understanding how a person’s or society’s cultural beliefs influence their health decisions.
Cultural incompetency must be addressed and eliminated in pharmacy practice to reduce health disparities.
This is achieved by understanding the cultural beliefs of the community you serve, recognizing the cultural diversity of individual patients, and providing informed counseling tailored to each person.
Check out our blog article titled, 8 Best Ways to Increase Cultural Competence in Pharmacy Practice or click on the image below.
Using Memes to Bridge Health Literacy Gaps.
Memes may seem unconventional, but they are a surprisingly effective tool for conveying complex medical information in an engaging and accessible way.
It is a creative idea that utilizes humor to engage with patients and direct their attention to the information they may need.
According to a study, factual memes help increase health literacy, especially among socially active vulnerable groups, because memes are easily shared across social media platforms.
However, when using memes, it is important to note culturally acceptable lingo, the use of large, clear fonts, and inclusive images.
Using Language Interpretation Services.
Language barriers are one significant cause of health disparities. They directly affect the communication between a pharmacist and a patient, leading to inaccurate and unsatisfactory service.
However, language interpretation services may help eliminate this barrier and significantly reduce health disparity due to the language barrier.
Language interpretation services include human interpreters and sign language for people with hearing impairments.
Organizing Community Outreaches.
Community outreaches help bridge the literacy gap that might contribute to increased health disparities.
Education is a crucial aspect of health as it helps patients understand what is happening in their bodies. This automatically gives them the ability to make informed health decisions. It also increases the feeling of inclusivity and significantly improves medication adherence.
Pharmacists' help reduce health disparities caused by illiteracy by collaborating with community leaders to organize community-based outreaches, where the local community is educated on relevant health issues using culturally relevant resources and people.
Providing Personalized Medication Counseling.
An important point about the definition of health disparities is that it focuses on avoidable differences in an individual’s health outcome.
Differences in health outcomes also result from a lack of understanding patients' needs.
Every patient, even in the same social group, has different medical needs. A pharmacist’s ability to offer personalized medication counseling to each patient can help increase their health outcomes, which are heavily influenced by their treatment regimen, including medications.
Offering Point-of-Care Testing to Underserved Communities.
Offering point-of-care testing (POCT) in underserved communities enhances access to healthcare services, helping to reduce health disparities.
For example, people living in rural communities have been known to have limited access to medical services, including pharmaceutical services. Pharmacists are able to organize outreach programs to assist these communities with POCT services.
This provides underserved populations with greater access to healthcare, allowing them to be tested, receive results promptly, and ensure high-risk individuals are identified and treated in a timely manner.
Activating Patient Assistance Programs (PAPs).
Patient assistance programs are run by pharmaceutical companies, while hospital pharmacies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may help facilitate access to them.
PAPs aim to provide underinsured or non-insured patients access to medications.
This means that Americans who lack the luxury of being under a health insurance program, or whose insurance neglects to cover their medications, are able to register with a patient assistance program, where they will be given access to needed medications with little to no cost.
However, the assistance offered varies from program to program, as do the eligibility requirements.
Pharmacists are in the position to assist patients in need by enrolling them, with their consent, in patient assistance programs.
Actively Advocating for Health Equity.
By effectively communicating with patients, pharmacists are able to identify root causes of health disparities in their communities and advocate for change.
Pharmacists reduce disparities by collaborating with other healthcare professionals to drive policy changes that promote equitable access to resources.
Encouraging the Use of Telepharmacy Services.
Telepharmacy services use telecommunication technology to provide pharmaceutical care to people living in rural and underserved communities.
They are also helpful for patients with limited access to pharmaceutical care due to the gravity of their health, such as reduced mobility (as seen in older adults).
The role of pharmacists in reducing health disparities among this group is to engage them using available telepharmacy services. This may also include training older adults to effectively use services or platforms.
From Vision to Impact: aPHP’s Role in Reducing Health Disparities
At aPHP, our mission is grounded in a pharmacist-led approach that integrates clinical expertise, data-driven strategies, and public health principles to drive productive change.
Through this model, aPHP focuses on improving medication access, enhancing adherence, and reducing health disparities. (For a deeper dive into the concept of population health pharmacy, see [How Medicaid Pharmacists Are Improving Medication Adherence & Patient Outcomes].)
This mission is deeply personal to Dr. La Kesha Y. Farmer, whose journey in population health began with a simple yet profound question:
“How might I drive meaningful change in healthcare—
improving outcomes for underserved communities while
advancing equitable solutions for all patients?”
This question laid the foundation for a career focused on closing care gaps through innovative approaches, expanding the pharmacist’s role beyond rigid expectations, and driving measurable improvements in population health outcomes.
The following sections provide an in-depth look at our founder’s journey and how it has shaped her vision for the future of pharmacy care.
Translating Experience into Action
Living as a Black person in America means navigating systems designed with barriers rather than bridges. It means understanding, firsthand, the weight of being unheard, overlooked, and forced to advocate for what is a given—equitable care.
This lived experience fuels my work, driving me to go beyond surface-level interventions and truly meet patients where they are.
Having a disabled sister exposed me to the harsh disparities individuals with disabilities face. As a population health pharmacist, I made it a priority to integrate disability-focused services into my program development, ensuring these patients receive the support they deserve.
Growing up with a Mexican stepfather deepened my understanding of Latinx culture and the distinct healthcare challenges within this community.
My intermediate Spanish fluency became an asset, allowing me to foster trust and deliver care that extended beyond medication management.
Sometimes, meaningful care meant spending extra time on the phone addressing non-medication concerns—ensuring patients felt seen, heard, and supported.
These moments reinforced clinical recommendations, strengthened trust, and demonstrated that true population health is built on relationships, prescriptions, and accessibility.
By translating experience into action, I bridge gaps in care, uplift marginalized communities, and ensure that pharmacy-driven solutions are rooted in equity, understanding, and lived reality.
Bridging Care Gaps: Integrating SDOH into Pharmacy Programs and Beyond
Integrating social determinants of health (SDOH) into pharmacy program development became a cornerstone of my strategy to reduce health disparities and drive productive change.
As a former SDOH specialist of a population health clinical pharmacy team, my research-backed insights guided analytics, equity, and corporate research teams in integrating pharmacy-led interventions into broader healthcare initiatives.
While overseeing a HEDIS Medi-Cal Clinical Pharmacy Program, I proactively sought guidance from a national SDOH advisor to enhance patient outcomes.
He noted that pharmacy teams are typically asked to assist with rolling out initiatives—but this was the first time a pharmacist had proactively reached out to ask how to contribute.
With this mindset, I bridged corporate teams unfamiliar with California’s healthcare landscape to local initiatives like CAL-AIM, ensuring that pharmacy-driven strategies aligned with statewide efforts to reduce health disparities.
Improving health outcomes requires more than medication management. Lowering hemoglobin A1c levels, for example, demands addressing external barriers like food insecurity. Ensuring access to nutritious food became just as critical as optimizing pharmacotherapy.
By facilitating interdisciplinary partnerships—including population health nurses, physicians, and pharmacists—I strengthened care coordination and case resolution efforts, reinforcing the role of pharmacists in whole-person care.
Through research-driven solutions and strategic collaboration, I expanded pharmacy’s impact beyond clinical care, ensuring that reducing health disparities remained at the forefront of healthcare innovation.
Advancing Health Equity Through Advocacy & Training
My commitment to health equity led to advocacy for maternal health initiatives aimed at addressing Black maternal mortality and the development of AIAN trauma-informed care training.
These efforts focused on increasing awareness of historical trauma, medical mistrust, and the healthcare challenges faced by Black and Native American (American Indian and Alaskan Native, AIAN) patients—a mission that continues through aPHP’s training programs.
However, reality proved challenging. Nurses leading the maternal care program pushed back, showing little interest in incorporating a pharmacist into maternal health initiatives.
Yet, standing down was hardly an option. Unlike the nurses overseeing the maternal program, the women dying looked like me, sounded like me, and shared similar educational backgrounds. This was beyond a professional commitment—it was personal.
For me, insisting on pharmacist involvement in maternal health advocacy became imperative, reinforcing the critical role pharmacists play in bridging healthcare gaps and advancing equitable outcomes for at-risk populations.
Beyond the Prescription: A Commitment to Change
I founded aPHP to showcase the immense value and resourcefulness of pharmacists while reminding communities of the central care role pharmacists held before the 1951 law restricted and attempted to limit their brilliance.
More than that, I designed aPHP to create real impact—working at every level to reduce barriers to pharmacoequity and to expand access to pharmacist-led cost-effective care.
Pharmacists face systemic disparities, often undervalued despite their expertise. Residency elitism deepens division, limiting opportunities for skilled pharmacists, fragmenting their professional identity, and weakening the profession as a whole.
aPHP challenges this status quo by equipping all pharmacists—residency-trained and residency-independent—with the tools, training, and strategies to reclaim their influence in healthcare.
Restoring pharmacists’ professional identity is central to aPHP’s mission. By shifting the focus from credentials to competency, we empower pharmacists to lead, innovate, and bridge healthcare gaps.
Through evidence-based education, advocacy, and a commitment to equity-driven solutions, aPHP prepares pharmacists to drive meaningful change—ensuring their role is no longer diminished, but fully recognized as an integral force in transforming patient care.
Pharmacists Leading the Charge in Reducing Health Disparities & Improving Care
The impact of health disparities on patients must be taken seriously. From increased medication non-adherence to higher mortality rates, these disparities extend beyond individuals, affecting families, communities, and society as a whole.
Pharmacists are crucial players in reducing health disparities because of their unique position in the healthcare system.
By leveraging their expertise, they address systemic barriers, advocate for policy reforms, and implement pharmacist-led interventions that improve medication access and adherence. Every opportunity must be utilized to advance health equity and improve patient outcomes.
Our Founder’s story exemplifies how pharmacists make a meaningful difference in patient care. Lived experience provides an unmatched ability to connect with patients, build trust, and drive outcomes through culturally competent, patient-centered care.
By recognizing the realities that shape health disparities, pharmacists strengthen their role as advocates and leaders in transforming healthcare.
But reducing health disparities does require ongoing collaboration.
Pharmacists please continue to work alongside healthcare professionals, community leaders, and fellow pharmacists, recognizing that interdisciplinary partnerships are essential to optimizing patient outcomes and ensuring equitable healthcare access.
Through commitment, innovation, and collective action, pharmacists strengthen healthcare systems to guarantee fair distribution of resources that influence optimal health outcomes, ensuring access to quality care for all.