Jamaica
Dental Mission Trip in Rural Jamaica
For more than twelve years, students, faculty and alumni from the SIUE School of Pharmacy have participated in the Jamaica Dental Mission. The primary goal of pharmacy participation is to help streamline the patient care process, allowing the dental profession to maximize the care they provide. We screen patients prior to seeing the dentists, provide post-operative education, dispense medications, distribute toys to children, and partner with dentists and dental students from across the USA and Canada to optimize medication therapies where indicated.
Services provided are screenings of blood pressure and glucose in those deemed clinically necessary. In the past three years more than 1800 patients received blood pressure screenings and more than 250 patients had blood glucose readings performed. Of these, more than 300 patients met the criteria for prehypertension and more than 90 patients met the criteria for undiagnosed hypertension. With blood glucose measurements, we found 61 patients with glucose levels over 200 mg/dl (17>300 mg/dl), 19 of whom had not previously known they had problems with their blood glucose. All of these patients were provided with educational materials on hypertension and/or diabetes, developed by 4th year pharmacy students, as well as referral materials for patients to take to their primary healthcare providers and urged to seek care immediately. When possible, care notes were also left in medical records to be reviewed by primary healthcare providers. The pharmacists and student pharmacists of the JDM are proud to serve an important role in the provision of care to the people of Jamaica. There are ten third year and fourth year students selected to participate in the annual JDM trip. The average cost of this week-long trip is $1600 per student.
Year implemented: Summer 2005
Faculty: Chris Lynch, Pharm.D. and Jenny Rosselli-Lynch, Pharm.D., BCACP
Contact: jalynch@siue.edu
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