Supporting Vulnerable and Medically Underserved Groups through Community Pharmacy

Dear Colleagues,

The right to physical and mental health is a universal human right. However, vulnerable patients and people that are medically under-served have higher rates of disease and ill-health and find accessing health and screening services challenging. In these cases, people’s experience with health services is variable, with many experiencing disadvantage or discrimination as a result of their status. People belonging to often marginalised groups (e.g. people with disabilities, homeless, home-bound, black and minority ethnic communities) experience significant inequitable access to care. This results in them experiencing poorer health outcomes when compared to the general population.

Improving fairness, social justice and addressing health disparities is a priority for our health systems. Community pharmacy is well placed to offer such support. Seen as ‘experts on medicines’, pharmacists are accessible through their extended opening hours and pharmacies are located in greater numbers in areas of highest deprivation.

We invite you to share your views and research that seeks to help the most vulnerable in our society. We are particularly interested in patient voices that are seldom heard, whether these be accounts of patients struggling to manage medicine regimens at home or interventions that seek to improve patient-professional engagement. We hope this Special Issue will highlight the significant problems that vulnerable and medically under-served groups face when managing their health and medicines. We also hope it will offer new insights and interventions that will tailor support to them.

Dr. Asam Latif
Founding Dean and Professor George E. MacKinnon III, PhD, MS, RPh
Chair/Assoc. Prof. Kajua Betsy Lor
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pharmacy is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Co-production
• Cultural competence
• Health inequalities
• Medically under-served groups
• Medicines optimisation
• Patient empowerment
• Pharmacy practice research
• Social inequalities in health