Spring 2016

It isn’t meant to feel welcoming. The John J. Moran Medium Security Facility in Cranston is surrounded by chain link fencing and barbed wire, a nerve-inducing sight for the College of Pharmacy students who attended Rhode Island’s first-ever health fair for incarcerated men this past fall, held in collaboration with the state Department of Corrections, Brown University’s Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, and the Damiano fellowship.

Then they stepped inside and got to work.

The 10 sixth-year Pharm.D. candidates joined Director of Pharmacy Outreach Rita Marcoux, Outreach Program Coordinators Nancy Tortolani and Noemi Ramos-DeSimone, and Associate Professor Lisa Cohen to provide blood pressure checks, BMI calculations, and educational sessions on medications, nutrition, and naloxone treatment for opioid overdose to nearly 1,000 inmates who attended the health fair.

Pharm.D. candidate Thomas Scartabello was inspired to volunteer at the event after completing his own Outreach rotation earlier that semester. “I was interested in working in a correctional facility because it was something I had never done before,” he says. In addition to providing blood pressure checks, Scartabello talked with inmates to answer questions about how to manage blood pressure levels with diet and exercise. “It was great to see how interested the men were in finding out how to take care of their health. They were so appreciative.”

Brown medical students and volunteers from community agencies also offered vision and dental checks, as well as information on flu vaccinations and health topics such as diabetes, smoking cessation, and prostate health.

“The care we provide in a correctional environment to help treat disease, substance abuse, and mental health issues has a critical impact.”

“The health fair was not only a valuable learning experience for the students, but it also reinforced for them that prisoner health is a public health issue for the communities where incarcerated individuals will eventually return,” says Marcoux. “The care we provide in a correctional environment to help treat disease, substance abuse, and mental health issues has a critical impact.”

The College of Pharmacy Outreach program was conceived in 1982 to help educate patients on their prescriptions, over-the-counter medications, and adherence to drug regimens. Since then, it has evolved to offer more than 130 educational programs that serve the Rhode Island community—from interactive presentations and health fairs to the Brown Bag Prescription Evaluation Clinics at the core of its mission—reaching an estimated 9,000 people each year.

For the Pharm.D. candidates who join the Outreach program as one of their six-week experiential learning rotations, it is a valuable opportunity to learn firsthand about their future patient community—and also one of their most rewarding experiences.

The health fair at the correctional facility was no exception.

Pharm.D. candidate Carlie Schuttinger participated at the event. In a written reflection on her Outreach experience, she notes that she was particularly touched by an email the students received later from the Department of Corrections with feedback from the inmates—most notably, one who wrote that participating in the health fair had made him feel more like a human being. “To know that we made that much of an impact on someone by doing something we do all the time was very rewarding,” she writes. “I felt the passion that I have for the field of pharmacy grow that day.”

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