AdPha announce new Climate and Health Specialty Practice Group and a sustainability focus on deprescribing on World Pharmacists Day.Advanced Pharmacy Australia (AdPha) has opened the doors to its 33rd specialty practice group (SPG), committed to examining and reducing the environmental impact of health care through hospital pharmacy practice.
Announced as part of FIP’s World Pharmacists Day celebrations, which in 2024 acknowledges the vital role pharmacists play in ‘meeting global health needs’, AdPha has also announced its third MedsAware campaign set to take place in mid-March 2025 will centre on the themes of sustainability and deprescribing.
Grace Wong FANZCAP (MedSafety, MedInfo), founder of Pharmacists for the Environment Australia (PEA), says the newly-formed group will focus on areas such as waste minimisation and management.
‘In hospital, we are really confronted by waste and when I talk to my peers it is one of the number one things they want addressed.
‘The AdPha Climate and Health Specialty Practice Group will assess ways we receive, process, use and dispose of products while looking at the changes we can make to the way we practice.
‘I don’t see a separation between providing health care and ensuring the planet is healthy. Put simply, we can’t call ourselves health professionals without thinking about the long term impacts our everyday practice has on the health of our planet.’
AdPha President Tom Simpson FANZCAP (Lead&Mgmt) says the new Climate and Health SPG and sustainability theme for MedsAware 2025 are just two of the many ways AdPha is supporting pharmacists, the profession and the community to think globally about health care.
‘Sustainability was a key theme covered in our recent Pharmacy Forecast Australia 2024 report, with 87% of pharmacist leaders forecasting that, by 2029, at least half of pharmacies will have developed and implemented environment policies to reduce waste and improve the carbon footprint.
‘Our new Climate and Health Specialty Practice Group will help in this effort, and we’re pleased to provide our new Communities platform to host like-minded members committed to this increasingly important area of pharmacy practice.
‘At our November Medicines Management Conference, we will have a dedicated sustainability stream and in March next year we will be shifting our deprescribing focus to sustainability as part of our MedsAware 2025: Deprescribing Action Week campaign. Healthcare accounts for 7 percent of Australia’s total carbon emissions, of which 19% is derived from pharmaceuticals, so we know the impact that safe deprescribing can have on both reducing our carbon footprint and improving patient health outcomes.
‘And of course, we will continue to champion innovative models of care like Partnered Pharmacist Medication Charting (PPMC) which has shown to keep patients out of hospital thereby reducing the environmental burden that comes with extended hospital stays.
‘Advanced Pharmacy Australia is the first and only pharmacy organisation collaborating in the Transitions to Sustainable Health Systems Consortium gathered to accelerate emissions reduction in the Australia health care system. We remain firmly committed to finding a sustainable path forward for health care that will benefit both patients and our planet.’
