Helping Hands: The PATIENTS Program Stays Connected to the Community

Written By: Genevieve Polk, MPH, Assistant Director of Dissemination and Implementation for The PATIENTS Program

Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series of Helping Hands stories authored by School of Pharmacy faculty, staff, students, trainees, and alumni who stepped up to assist their family and friends, colleagues, and communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Housed within the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research (PHSR) at the School of Pharmacy, The PATIENTS Program serves as a bridge between the communities that encompass West Baltimore and researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). The PATIENTS Program envisions a world in which patients and stakeholders are heard, inspired, and empowered to co-develop patient-centered outcomes research.

To engage community members in the research process, The PATIENTS Program maintains a dedicated three-person engagement team. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions on public gatherings, as well as social distancing guidelines, the engagement team has not been able to go out into the community like they regularly did in the past. Instead, the team has worked closely with the program’s dissemination and implementation team to use social media and videography in creative ways to engage with and assist our community. The first video developed as part of this new initiative was shared on The PATIENTS Program’s Facebook page, and garnered more than 300 views. The video focused on ways that individuals can take care of their own health as we continue to follow the stay-at-home order, and even more importantly, encouraged everyone to reach out to neighbors and friends during these hard times.

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