Opportunities for pharmacist intervention: Exploring barriers to accessing HIV post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) in the United States

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Authors

Cara Christopher¹

1. Thomas Jefferson University

Conference / event

Jefferson MPH Capstone Symposium, March 2023 (Philadelphia, United States)

Poster summary

This scoping review investigates the barriers to receiving post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) for HIV in the US and the potential contribution of pharmacists to easing patient access. To stop HIV replication, PEP medication must be received within 72 hours of exposure. For PEP, the CDC advises attending urgent care facilities, physician offices, or emergency rooms. 37 states lack this option since only 13 states allow pharmacists to provide PEP from retail pharmacies. Timely care is further hampered nationwide by a lack of healthcare workers. Especially in rural areas and locations where there is a dearth of healthcare professionals, this evaluation intends to pinpoint impediments and explore ways that pharmacists might improve PEP availability. Prior research has emphasized the importance of pharmacists in lowering stigma, increasing PEP awareness, and incorporating them into HIV preventative treatment.

Keywords

Public health, Pharmacist, HIV, PEP, Prevention, Infection

Research areas

Medicine, Pharmacy and Pharmacology, Public Policy and International Affairs

References

No data provided

Funding

No data provided

Supplemental files

No data provided

Additional information

Competing interests

No competing interests were disclosed.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and / or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 Christopher. This is an open access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.