More than half a million New Yorkers reported needing medical care in the past 12 months, but not receiving it.
Medication Adherence Project
Only about half of patients with chronic illnesses adhere to taking their prescribed medications. To help clinicians and pharmacists who work in busy primary care practices better serve patients with chronic conditions, the NYC Health Department's Cardiovascular Prevention and Control Program developed and implemented the Medication Adherence Project (MAP), made possible by a private grant to the Fund for Public Health in New York (FPHNY).
Before the project, clinicians identified poor medication adherence as one of the greatest barriers to achieving optimal outcomes in their patients with chronic disease. In response, MAP developed and implemented a training course and toolkit to help health care teams and pharmacists engage patients in productive conversations about medicine-taking. From 2007 to 2009, MAP trained 90 participants from 28 health care sites and pharmacies around New York City and post-training surveys showed that participants were more satisfied with patient interactions after participating in MAP.
Although in-person MAP trainings are no longer being conducted, the MAP tools and information on a MAP training manual are available for download here.
MAP also produced four supplemental videos to accompany the training manual, which are designed to enhance understanding of adherence issues faced by the patient and the provider.
Video #1: The Patient Perspective:
This 13-minute video will introduce you to Jacqueline Fox-Pascal, a Deputy Program Director in the NYC Health Department's Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control. Ms. Fox-Pascal's role is to help clinicians and community groups implement effective public health programming. However, when Ms. Fox-Pascal was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, she discovered how difficult it was to practice what we health professionals preach.
Video #2: Provider Testimonial:
In this 10-minute video, primary care physician Jennifer Adams reflects on her experience understanding patient barriers to adherence.
Video #3: Role-Play Demonstration
This 5-minute video of patient-provider interaction is intended to demonstrate that even in a short office visit, providers can engage their patients and help them to set small, realistic goals, which will in turn, help patients to better self-manage their chronic disease.
Video #4: "Fishbowl" Exercise and Demonstration
Also known as a round-robin exercise, this video will demonstrate a helpful way to practice the engaging and informing skills that you learned about in Part One of the manual.