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Maxx Enzmann, PharmD Candidate 2019
Drake Reiter, PharmD Candidate 2020
Drake University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

In the fall of 2017, we organized an educational symposium about alcohol use disorder on Drake University's campus. Our goal was to educate students, faculty, and staff on the topic of alcohol use disorder and to reduce the level of stigma surrounding this condition through an interactive and educational symposium. We were encouraged by our survey results indicating significant decreases in stigma and significant increases in knowledge from before the symposium to after the symposium. 

At the college of pharmacy, the topic of alcohol use disorder is only briefly taught in the general curriculum and students must opt to take an elective in order to adequately learn this topic. Because interprofessional education is an accreditation standard for all colleges of pharmacy, we feel that educational symposia such as this would be great to implement during interprofessional events at all colleges of pharmacy. 

This educational symposium was inexpensive to produce and was the first of its kind on the topic of alcohol use disorder on Drake University’s campus, incorporating a unique approach to teaching this very important subject matter. Based on the results, we believe that educational symposia such as this would have a significantly larger increase in student knowledge of this topic compared to traditional interprofessional education events, along with a decrease in student stigma surrounding alcohol use disorder. Our symposium showed that the number of students reached and the positive outcomes achieved were very large in respect to the amount of time and money spent on student education.

We hope other universities organize educational events on substance use disorders, even those without pharmacy programs, as these conditions can be very prevalent among all college campuses. Lastly, we hope our event has sparked enough interest to form a CPNP student chapter at Drake University to further propagate such important topics.

Reference:

2018 CPNP Annual Meeting Original Research Trainee Award Winner: https://aapp.org/resource/shared/poster/363504/decreasing-stigma-surrounding-alcohol-use-disorder

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