Characterization and description of APPE rotations and their intended outcomes at practice sites with exposure to HIV patients

Purpose: Although the past two decades have seen significant progress and improved disease outcomes in the treatment of HIV and AIDS, the condition continues to be a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. In particular, certain population groups are disproportionately affected by the disease, indicating the need for specific targeting of treatment in order to maximize intervention effectiveness. Just as other healthcare professionals, pharmacists can play a key role in HIV interventions by facilitating pharmaceutical treatment, conducting medication therapy management, and performing other key interventions. As with any other disease state, specific training of practitioners is of great importance in the treatment of HIV and AIDS. Therefore, the availability of HIV APPE pharmacy school rotations, geographically matched to meet HIV population demand, constitutes a desirable goal. Methods: Our project sets out to find gaps in HIV coverage which could be filled by the creation of novel clinical practice sites or HIV APPE rotations. We will be conducting a survey of ACPE accredited colleges of pharmacy APPE preceptors and collecting syllabi with the intent of identifying and characterizing APPE rotations that have exposure to HIV populations. Through varied means of outreach, we will identify points of contact at each ACPE accredited college of pharmacy in the US deemed likely to be able to most accurately and correctly provide responses to our survey. Once identified, survey recipients will receive an email with a cover letter summarizing our research goals, along with a link to complete the Qualtrics survey electronically. Results/Conclusions: Survey results will allow us to describe areas in the US where HIV APPE rotations are offered. Following this, we will next align this geographic distribution with HIV surveillance, HIV clinician workforce supply, and CDC chronic disease and health indicators data. Collectively these representations will provide invaluable insight for colleges of pharmacy and healthcare institutions when determining where to develop/initiate clinical practice sites for clinical faculty and APPE rotations. This abstract is being submitted in order to solicit feedback on project design and methodology.