(1300) Experiences and Training Needs of Pharmacy Technicians Related to Social Determinants of Health

Objectives: Social determinants of health (SDOH) are defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as, “the nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes. They are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life.” SDOH were identified as a priority area for Healthy People 2030. As highly accessible health care professionals, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians often interact with patients who may be struggling with a variety of health issues that are negatively impacted by SDOH. Despite the national focus on SDOH, there is little described in the existing literature regarding SDOH education for pharmacy technicians. The objectives of this study are to describe pharmacy technicians’: 1) current knowledge of social determinants of health; 2) experiences with patients facing health care barriers due to social determinants of health; 3) perceived SDOH training needs; and 4) desired SDOH training and format.

Methods: A cross-sectional online survey design will be distributed to all licensed pharmacy technicians in the state of Nebraska in October 2023 through December 2023. The pharmacy technician licensure listing which includes e-mail addresses will be obtained from the State of Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. The survey is currently under construction and will focus on the following areas: demographics (current practice setting, years worked as a technician, if they are certified, gender, race, and ethnicity); responsibilities as a technician; knowledge of SDOH; experiences with patients impacted negatively by SDOH; past training related to SDOH; training gaps related to SDOH; and desired type(s) of SDOH training. The survey will be pilot tested with current pharmacy interns and/or pharmacists practicing in different settings (e.g. hospital, outpatient clinic, independent community, retail/grocery community, etc.). Pharmacy technicians will not be used in the pilot to preserve the full study population for the administration of the finalized survey. Face and content validity will be established through this process along with the expertise of the faculty mentor who conducts extramurally funded research and teaches in the area of social determinants of health. The survey will be placed on the Qualtrics online survey platform. A personalized e-mail invitation will be sent to all Nebraska licensed pharmacy technicians, followed by a reminder e-mail two weeks later to non-responders, and a final invitation two weeks after the reminder. The survey will remain open for four weeks after the final invitation. Data will be exported from Qualtrics to IBM SPSS Statistics for analysis. All data will be analyzed descriptively and reported in frequency counts, percentages, means and medians as appropriate. Responses will be compared across practice settings with categorical data analyzed using chi square tests and continuous data analyzed using analysis of variance, independent samples t-tests, or Mann-Whitney U test depending on normality of data. A significance level of p< 0.05 will be used for all analyses.

Results: A full set of findings will be presented at the APhA Annual Meeting.

Conclusions: Study findings are intended to help advance the knowledge base about pharmacy technicians’ experiences with and interest in engaging further with patients who are experiencing difficulties due to SDOH. Although limited to a single state, study findings can identify current training gaps and future training needs to support both pharmacy technicians and the patients they serve.