Pharmacy Act, 1974 (Act No. 53 of 1974)Board NoticesCompetency Standards in South AfricaCompetency Standards for a Specialist Pharmacist who provides public health pharmacy and management services in South AfricaIntroduction |
The World Health Organisation (WHO) explicitly states that public health refers to all organised measures, whether public or private, to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life amongst the population.
Public health activities are therefore aimed at improving health for entire populations and not only individual patients or a particular disease. The WHO and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society identified three main public health functions or domains. The pharmacy profession has a role to play across all three:
| (a) | Health protection which entails the assessment and monitoring of the health of communities and populations at risk to identify health problems and priorities. This includes infectious diseases, environmental hazards and emergency preparedness. |
| (b) | Health service delivery and quality, including service planning, efficiency, audit, evaluation, and the formulation of public policies designed to solve identified local and national health problems and priorities. |
| (c) | Health improvement, which includes health promotion and disease prevention services, to ensure that all populations have access to appropriate and cost-effective care. |
Pharmaceutical public health focuses on the development of pharmacy services and expertise to enhance the health and well-being of a whole population. This definition does not, however, cover all the key aspects and potential roles of pharmacists in public health, categorised previously as micro and macro-level activities. Micro-level activities focus on individual health promotion and disease prevention services, while macro-level activities comprise population-wide approaches, including policy formulation, planning and management functions.
The specialist qualification in public health pharmacy and management will predominantly be appropriate for pharmacists involved in macro-level activities in the public and private sectors.
A public health and management pharmacist is a pharmacist registered with Council and who plays a key role in the assessment and monitoring of the health of a community or the general population. They formulate public health policies which address identified health problems and health improvement needs including health promotion and disease prevention. Therefore, a public health and management pharmacist can specialise inter alia in public health promotion, disease prevention, policy formulation, planning and management in public and private healthcare sectors.
The purpose of this professional master’s degree is to extend the public health and pharmacy management competencies of pharmacists to become specialists in the field of public health pharmacy and management, apply their expertise in this field and add value to the provision of pharmaceutical services within the health system. Completing this qualification will enable specialist pharmacists to contribute to public health outcomes and the management of pharmaceutical services. The degree is inherently practice-based with a large component of work-integrated learning.