Academic Exchange Quarterly     ISSN 1096-1453    Volume 22, Issue 3    Fall 2018 Community Engaged Culturally Sensitive Pharmacy Design Our article, “Community Engaged Culturally Sensitive Pharmacy Design,” (Fall 2018 issue) presents lessons learned from a collaborative community-engaged project in a pharmacy, which is focused on patient-centered care. The goal of the project was to provide interior-design students a service-learning experience aimed at bridging the gap between theory and practice in an authentic setting. Interior design students gained disciplinary and cross-cultural experiences while problem solving for the pharmacy, which mainly serves Hmong and Karen cultures. Students reported about learning about the community, gaining a better understanding of pharmacy needs and cultural aspects as major benefits of this experience. We hope our findings help stimulate discussion and research about pharmacy design, client-care outcomes, and how our approach could be a model for educators to use with students interested in culturally-sensitive, client-sensitive pharmacy design. The article speaks well to our approach and provides details about the project. We’ll take this editorial opportunity to offer more about client care, pharmacy interior design, and a future research direction. Pharmacies and the profession of pharmacy, which provides licensed practitioners to those pharmacies, have evolved like any other business wishing to survive, including other health care enterprises. In the U.S., people needing prescription medications go mainly to brick-and-mortar pharmacies. Last year, just over 4 billion prescriptions were filled in retail U.S. pharmacies. (1) However, more than $500 billion in health care spending results from so-called “drug-related problems.” These problems include patients simply not taking their medications as prescribed. According to research recently published (2, 3), only half of medications prescribed for treating acute and chronic conditions are taken as originally recommended. Some patients elect not to fill a prescription, they confront impediments to filling a prescription, or use only a few doses without finishing the course of treatment, which can lead to poor outcomes or hospital readmission, adding to health-care costs. Nevertheless, the most frequent drug-related problem occurs when a person has a chronic condition that could be remedied but who, for a range of reasons, does not initiate treatment. The conditions may be quite mild or sporadic, not rising to the level of concern that might prompt a person to seek medical care. Alternatively, people may not seek medical attention because of a lack of primary-care clinicians, high out-of-pocket costs, access or medication-use issues, or having insufficient or a lack of insurance. Pharmacists, the nation’s third largest health profession, frequently have direct contact with patients, physicians, and other prescription-writing providers in most locations. Pharmacists are well situated to intervene on patients’ behalf. Now, what about the places where most pharmacists work? Could a more inviting, culturally-sensitive design help patient-client groups feel more comfortable when choosing to come to a pharmacy for assistance or have prescriptions filled? What are these pharmacies like? Are pharmacies designed for efficiency for its employees, to satisfy legal requirements, or to be inviting for patrons? What do patrons think about going to a pharmacy and how it looks? Take a look; what do you see in your neighborhood? Over the last few decades independent, sole-owner pharmacies have decreased dramatically. The number of conglomerate, corporate pharmacies has risen. The shift in ownership is a debate for another day. Let’s focus on the physical appearance, the design, of the majority of corporate U.S. pharmacies serving a walk-in, ambulatory trade. Corporate pharmacies look similar. The architecture and design reinforce a corporate brand. A brick-and-mortar location in an urban area or within a supermarket or big-box store has the same look and feel as a rural location, even if the square footage varies. The brand may be reinforced, but what do the clientele, the patients using medications, think about an environment when they consider seeking a pharmacy for medication information, an empathic approach, a place to discuss a sensitive subject, a reinforcing word, privacy, or information on general health topics? How do patients respond to design changes that a large enterprise introduces corporate-wide? (4) Without a doubt, designing a pharmacy to be culturally inviting for its patrons is a socially good thing. We submit that it is time to go further and ask how a pharmacy’s interior design influences medication-related outcomes of its clientele, its patients, current and future, which wish to use a pharmacy. In other words, would a cultural or client-sensitive designed pharmacy contribute to a reduction in “drug-related problems” among its patients? We believe this would be an excellent collaborative opportunity and a future area for research. (1) Number of Retail Prescription Drugs Filled at Pharmacies by Payer [Accessed July 2, 2018] (2) Cost of not Taking your Medicine [Accessed July 9, 2018] (3) Viswanathan M, Golin CE, Jones CD et al. Interventions to improve adherence to self-administered medications for         chronic diseases in the United States: a systematic review. Ann Intern Med. 2012 Dec 4; 157 (11): 785-95. (4) Walgreens Unveils Rebranding Effort as Pharmacy Wars Escalate [Accessed July 9, 2018]         Abimbola O. Asojo, University of Minnesota         Paul L. Ranelli, University of Minnesota         Alina Cernasev, University of Minnesota         Justine Pliska, University of Minnesota