AHEC Review 
Spring 2009
(click here to download a pdf of this AHEC Review)
pharmacy vote and vaccination
On November 4, 2008, voters at three polling sites in Charlotte rolled up their sleeves for a flu shot after casting their ballot thanks to students and faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a local pharmacy.
The clinics were provided as part of Vote & Vax, a nationwide project that provided influenza vaccinations at hundreds polling sites across the country.
Each site was staffed by students from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy as well as experienced pharmacists from Pike’s Pharmacy and the Charlotte Area Health Education Center, who administered the injections.
The flu vaccines were administered after voters had cast their ballots so as not to interfere with the voting process.
“By holding the clinics at the polling sites, we definitely had a place where we were seen, and people were already going to be there to vote anyway,” said Joan Settlemyer, director of pharmacy education at the Charlotte AHEC and a clinical assistant professor at the School.
The students, in their fourth year in the doctor of pharmacy program at UNC, are completing their clerkships at the Charlotte AHEC. Barbour, Settlemyer, and Jesse Pike, the owner of Pike’s Pharmacy, oversaw one of the Vote & Vax sites.
Vote & Vax was organized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Sickness Prevention Achieved through Regional Collaboration.
“I think Vote & Vax is a very creative idea,” says Steve Caiola, chair of the School’s Division of Pharmacy Practice and Experiential Education. “And the collaboration between our faculty, a couple of great practitioners and preceptors, and our mutual students is a model we would like to propagate everywhere across the state. There are advantages to all parties, including, most importantly, the North Carolinians whose health will benefit from such collaborative provision of a needed service.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 36,000 people die from influenza each year in the United States. The CDCP recommends flu vaccinations for people 50 years of age and older, children between six months and 19 years old, pregnant women, people with certain chronic medical conditions, people who live in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, and people who live with or care for those at high risk for complications from flu.