The Importance of Medication Adherence: How Philadelphia College of Pharmacy Students Won a National Award by Teaching Others

On an early February morning inside the Giac Lam Buddhist temple in West Philadelphia, Kimberly Phan, PharmD ’25, and Gia Ho, PharmD ’25, laid out blood pressure health pamphlets and medication adherence cards on a table. Each pamphlet was translated from English to Vietnamese using patient-friendly language. 

In the following hours, Phan, Ho and six other volunteers from Saint Joseph’s Philadelphia College of Pharmacy’s Script Your Future team spoke with nearly 150 Vietnamese-Americans about medication adherence and immunization compliance. It was one of numerous initiatives the team led at the beginning of the year that landed them a national award at the 2024 Script Your Future Medication Adherence Team Challenge, hosted by the National Consumers League.

Phan and Ho, who fluently speak Vietnamese, recognize that information can often be lost in translation when healthcare providers meet with non-English speakers. However, this misunderstanding extends far beyond non-English speakers. According to the National Institute of Health, 75% of Americans have trouble taking their medicine as directed.

“If you’re not taking your medications [as directed], you’re not going to get the benefit of them,” says Charrell Lipscomb, PharmD, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice and Administration and Script Your Future faculty coordinator. “The goal of Script Your Future is to promote medication adherence. The challenge occurs in a two-month window from January to March, during which all medication adherence efforts are captured, tallied and scored. Different universities and schools compete during that window to demonstrate their effect within their communities.” 

During the two-month window, the Script Your Future team held three community outreach events and three on-campus events. Additionally, they worked with numerous external partners like the Cooper Rowan Clinic, the American Pharmacists Association and more.

One of the community outreach events involved a collaboration with Saint Joseph’s Institute of Clinical Bioethics (ICB) and their health promoter clinics, where they provide free-of-charge health screenings, dental screenings and cleanings, eyeglasses, vitamins and more. Led by Peter Clark, SJ, PhD, professor of theology and religious studies and director of the Institute of Clinical Bioethics, the program helps uninsured, underinsured and/or undocumented individuals who may struggle to access or afford medical care. Christ Do, PharmD ’26, who is a part of ICB’s Fellows Program, says this collaboration was one of his favorites. 

“Something that allowed us to help more people this year was partnering with other interprofessional occupations,” says Do. “For example, we worked with Father Clark to bring materials to health promoters, like pill boxes. We also went to the streets of Kensington and started our first, free vaccine clinic.” 

Similar to the health promoter program, the Script Your Future team provided care to 86 patients at the Cooper Rowan Clinic in Camden, New Jersey. For Lipscomb, this was her favorite initiative, as she loves patient care. 

“Medication adherence is sometimes as simple as speaking the same language,” says Lipscomb. “I found how easy it can be to fix someone’s problem when you both understand what each other is saying.” 

This was especially true when the Script Your Future team traveled to Costa Rica for their first-ever humanitarian service learning trip. The team worked with physical and occupational therapy students to provide clinical care. During the clinics, the team asked patients about their medication adherence and taught them to identify signs that their adherence could be improved. Over the course of a week, the team provided 100 pill boxes, 75 medication lists and saw numerous patients from ages 3 to 72.

“My biggest takeaway is medication adherence is not just the patient’s responsibility, but it is also the pharmacist’s responsibility,” says Phan. “We should be able to provide patient-friendly language, educate the patient and be creative.”

As Ho, the chair of the Script Your Future team, looks to her future as a pharmacist, she recognizes how this challenge provided her with real-life experience that she will use in her professional career. 

“After graduating, I want to pursue a residency,” says Ho. “I did my last rotation at Lankenau Medical Center and I did a lot of transition of care and discharge counseling. During my time there, I applied what I did with Script Your Future to many patients who came in because they were not using their inhalers properly. So, it was very cool to use what I have already learned during my time at Saint Joseph’s.”