Pharmacists Could Be Public Health’s Untapped Frontline, Academics Warn

Community pharmacies sit on one of the most valuable yet least exploited frontiers of modern public health, according to a new qualitative study from Türkiye that captures how the country’s pharmacy academics view the profession’s untapped preventive potential. Published in the International Journal of Public Health, the research suggests that the very people trained to understand medicines better than almost anyone else are being held back from population-scale health work by gaps in their own education and by health systems that have never formally defined what a pharmacist’s public health role should be.

The study, led by Şeyma Halaç of the Turkish Ministry of Health alongside colleagues from İstanbul University-Cerrahpaşa and the University of Health Sciences, set out to answer a deceptively simple question: how do the academics who train future pharmacists actually perceive public health, and do they believe pharmacy education equips graduates to deliver it? To find out, the team conducted in-depth, semi-structured online interviews with eleven pharmacy academics drawn from eight universities across Istanbul, four public and four private, between November 2024 and January 2025.

The participant pool was deliberately diverse. It spanned clinical pharmacy, pharmacognosy, pharmaceutical technology and pharmaceutical toxicology, and ranged from assistant professors to full professors, with a mean age of 38 years. Recruitment followed a maximum-variation sampling strategy and closed after eleven interviews, when the researchers judged that the information gathered had reached sufficient depth and that new interviews were producing few substantively fresh ideas. Interviews lasted roughly forty minutes each, were audio-recorded with consent, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, with reporting structured according to the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research, the international standard checklist for qualitative studies.

The analysis produced a framework of fifteen codes organised into four domains under a single overarching theme: the strategic role and perceptions of pharmacists in public health. Those domains covered how academics conceptually define public health, their emphasis on preventive healthcare, the individual and societal awareness elements that underpin it, and the concrete points of contact between community pharmacy and population health. Across all four, one message dominated: prevention, not treatment, is where pharmacists could make their greatest difference.

The single most intensively discussed topic in the interviews was the idea of taking precautions before diseases occur. Academics framed public health as a protective, preventive and multidimensional enterprise that extends far beyond individual patients to encompass social welfare, equitable access to services and even psychological wellbeing. One participant described public health as all efforts to protect and improve the general health of society, stressing that improving health conditions at the societal level and providing equal access to health services are as much a part of the field as treating the sick. Another emphasised that physicians, pharmacists, nurses, government and companies all carry a share of responsibility, and that community pharmacists have a distinct duty within that shared model.

That preventive framing has concrete technical implications. Participants repeatedly pointed to screening, early guidance, immunisation and infectious disease follow-up as activities where pharmacy’s accessibility gives it an edge over conventional clinic-based services. Community pharmacies are, in many neighbourhoods, the healthcare settings people visit most often, and that repeated, low-barrier contact creates natural opportunities for early intervention, counselling and referral. One academic noted that pharmacists’ daily practice can be preventive and prophylactic while also supporting treatment, positioning the pharmacy as the first link in a chain of information, monitoring and referral that relieves pressure on the wider health system.

International models featured prominently in the academics’ reasoning. Several pointed to the United States, where pharmacists actively participate in vaccination campaigns, as evidence that pharmacies can function as genuine public health delivery points rather than mere dispensing outlets. The idea of turning pharmacies into vaccination centres was offered as a concrete example of public health practice that could plausibly be transferred to Türkiye. This aligns with a growing body of international evidence, cited in the study, showing pharmacist-led interventions improving vaccination coverage, screening uptake and chronic disease monitoring in a range of health systems.

Yet the academics were equally clear about why this potential remains unrealised in Türkiye. Three barriers emerged. First, pharmacy education itself was judged insufficient: public health competencies are not adequately embedded in undergraduate curricula, and one participant argued that public health should be part of all courses because the field draws on every discipline. Second, societal health literacy is perceived as low, which undermines the effectiveness of any preventive service. Participants described patients self-treating with information from hearsay or television rather than reliable sources, and one academic lamented that health literacy in the country is not at very high levels, directly linking this deficit to the impact of public health services.

The third barrier is systemic. Although Ministry of Health Circulars No. 2019/10 and 2019/18 formally recognised community pharmacies as providers of primary healthcare services in Türkiye, participants said pharmacists’ public health potential remains underused and that services are not sufficiently standardised. Without policies that formally recognise pharmacists as frontline public health practitioners, the academics argued, the profession’s accessibility advantage cannot be converted into measurable population health gains. One participant summarised the frustration bluntly: the potential role of pharmacists in public health in Türkiye is not sufficiently evaluated, but with the right training, empowerment and support, this situation can change.

The study’s authors conclude that strengthening public health education within pharmacy curricula, supported by postgraduate and continuing professional development, and establishing policies that formally recognise pharmacists as frontline public health practitioners could substantially enhance the profession’s contribution to population health. The findings carry caveats: all participants were Istanbul-based academics, so the views may not transfer to other regions or to community pharmacists themselves, who were not interviewed. Future research, the team notes, should include geographically diverse participants and additional professional groups, and should examine how the proposed roles can be operationalised and evaluated in real-world practice. Even so, the message from the educators who shape the profession is unambiguous: the pharmacy on the corner is already a public health asset, and the systems around it have yet to act like it.

Subject of Research: Pharmacy academics' perceptions of pharmacists' public health roles and barriers in Türkiye

Article Title: Pharmacy academicians’ perception towards public health: a qualitative study

Article References: Halaç, Ş., Bektay, M. Y., Eker, H. H., & Öztürk, M. (2026). Pharmacy academicians’ perception towards public health: a qualitative study. International Journal of Public Health, 71, Article 1608594. https://doi.org/10.3389/ijph.2026.1608594

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/ijph.2026.1608594

Keywords: public health, community pharmacy, pharmacists, pharmacy education, health literacy, preventive healthcare, qualitative study, Türkiye, vaccination, chronic disease management, thematic analysis, primary healthcare