Medicine Maker: An Outreach Activity for Pharmaceutical Manufacturing and Health Literacy

Abstract

Public engagement in medicine has become more important in promoting population health management and literacy. Medicine is a topic of great societal importance, and many public engagement activities have been developed to promote this area. However, they often narrowly focus on patient groups, diseases, a singular pharmaceutical drug or analytical technique. Despite the importance of these activities, general audiences are still heavily reliant on doctors and pharmacists for information about their medicine and lack basic knowledge around medication use and personal safety. Given this, a broader engagement approach is warranted to target health literacy among the wider public. “Medicine Maker” is a hands-on public engagement workshop that provides audiences with the opportunity to “manufacture” and inspect the quality of proxy or “dummy” medicine through guided inquiry. Here, we detail the development of the Medicine Maker workshop from its origins in the teaching of Irish third-level pharmacy students, to its initial application with a variety of lay audiences. Formal and informal feedback from participants indicates that the workshop can help foster a more critical understanding of medicine manufacturing, quality control, and personal health.

Current Chemistry Investigators (CCI): Development and Evaluation of a Scientist in a Classroom Electrochemistry Workshop

“…In addition to the consent and gender questions, two pre-workshop questions were asked of the students. The authors recognize that school students receive numerous external interventions at various stages of their formal education. ,,, The pre-workshop questions were therefore designed to establish a baseline for previous meetings with role models and the level of career encouragement received to date. This was deemed to be especially important due to the extensive disruption caused to these students by the COVID-19 pandemic …”

Molecules in Medicine: A Week-Long Multidisciplinary Summer Camp for High School Students

“…13−18 These activities vary widely in scope and time commitment, and include in-class projects 13 and experiments, 17 inquiry-based exercises, 14 summer courses, 15 workshops, 16 and public engagement efforts. 18 Herein, we present a unique combination of exciting drug discovery and development related activities that can be utilized as a weeklong summer camp or smaller outreach modules to engage high school students in multidisciplinary experiments at the intersection of science and medicine.…”

What’s in That Medicine: An Inquiry-Based Activity to Introduce Medicinally Active Natural Products and Metals

“…11 Pepto-Bismol has been the topic of other laboratory activities because of its unique and significant metal content. 12 There are some published traditional laboratory activities that address pharmaceuticals, although many are not suitable for high school students due to their need for specialized equipment, 3,13,14 and few address metals in medicine. 15 The inquiry-based activity described herein evolved from an adapted traditional lab activity where students were given stepby-step instructions to isolate and quantify the amount of bismuth metal in Pepto-Bismol 16 (see Supporting Information).…”

“…Integrating chemical concepts with real-life knowledge will improve science literacy, promote critical thinking, and encourage informed decision-making outside of the classroom. Laboratory lessons that revolve around medicine and pharmacology are ideal topics for developing real-life laboratory scenarios because they (1) call upon nearly universal experiences in taking medicinesenabling educators to reach a diverse student audience, (2) provide a foundation for finding and understanding basic health information to make appropriately informed decisions, and (3) can initiate interest in health and pharmacology as a future area of study for students. − …”

“…Pepto-Bismol has been the topic of other laboratory activities because of its unique and significant metal content . There are some published traditional laboratory activities that address pharmaceuticals, although many are not suitable for high school students due to their need for specialized equipment, ,, and few address metals in medicine …”