Pharmaceuticals & Public Health

Today, the right to health is often enacted as a right to access pharmaceuticals. This pharmaceuticalization of public health creates both opportunities for relief and new risks for patient safety and sustainability such as overmedicalization, waning effectiveness, and iatrogenic harm.

De-Prescribing

In health policy-making, a “less is more” approach of de-prescribing has become part of quaternary prevention with optimization of services at its core. The project builds a more robust evidence-base for this approach, asking:

• What does de-prescribing mean?
• Where are de-prescribing methods used, how, and to what effect?

New Ideas, New Guidelines

Existing policies focus on guidelines for providers and indirect user regulation. Yet, little is known about provider and user experience or circulation pathways–pharmaceuticals’ “cultural efficacy”–that could inform a more context-sensitive, evidence-based policy approach.

The project collects data on pharmaceutical prescription, circulation, use, and develops workable models, regulations, and guidelines for evaluating and using pharmaceuticals with a stakeholder-driven co-creation approach.