U of T Pharmacy alum presents at World Health Assembly in Geneva

Yifan Zhou (PharmD 2021) first became interested in global health during the third-year Global Pharmaceutical Policy course at U of T’s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. Recently, she was able to participate in global health policy by representing the International Pharmacy Student Federation (IPSF) at the 75th World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, held in Geneva, Switzerland.

The experience gave her unique insight into how global health policy is governed and provided opportunities to meet pharmacy students from around the world.

“I really love this profession, but I also realized that this profession is not the same across the world. This experience opened my eyes to the many different public health issues countries face,” says Zhou, who is currently completing a hospital residency at University Health Network in Toronto. “I also learned a lot from hanging out with the other IPSF delegates. We learned a lot from each other about the global health system and shared our country’s solutions to a number of health challenges.”

During Zhou’s third-year of the PharmD program, she took the Global Pharmaceutical Policy course taught by Professor Jillian Kohler.

“In today’s world, it is essential for pharmacy students to understand how global issues impact pharmacy practice in Canada and outside our borders,” says Kohler. “I design my course to encourage students to think globally and critically and to particularly focus on issues related to marginalized populations who don’t have secure access to essential medicines and to take action to make pharmacy systems more equitable.”

“It has been so rewarding to learn that many of the students who have taken my course have since pursued opportunities in global health by working with international organizations on pharmaceutical policy or pursing pharmacy practice in countries outside of Canada,” says Kohler.

Zhou says Kohler’s course broadened her perspective of how pharmacy is practised around the world and piqued her interest in global health issues.

“It opened my mind to a lot of things that I didn’t know. This course allowed me to become more curious, and I became more aware of different health care infrastructures around the world,” she says. “This course is a great way to begin to expose students to the complexity of issues in global health.”

Zhou had been interested in joining an organization related to public or global health, and in 2019, she first became involved with the IPSF, an international advocacy organization for pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences students, through their student exchange program and serving on the translation and communication subcommittee.

IPSF is one of only two student organizations that are in official relations with the WHO and can send delegates to the WHA, the governing body of the WHO. At this large annual meeting, delegates from the WHO’s 194 member states along with recognized non-governmental stakeholders meet to make decisions about the WHO’s policies, review its work, make new goals, discuss public health issues, and review budgets.

Zhou was one of four IPSF delegates to deliver policy statements in person

Before the in-person assembly took place, Zhou and other IPSF delegates worked together to draft brief position statements about different health policy issues on the WHA agenda. Zhou says she was most proud of her work on the statement about WHO’s work in health emergencies, which emphasized the important roles health care trainees can play in providing patient education, vaccines, and disease screening. Through her work on this statement, she realized how much Canadian pharmacy students had been able to contribute to health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was not the case in many other countries.

In late May, nearly 30 IPSF delegates from around the world, including one other Canadian, travelled to Geneva to attend the meetings. Due to COVID-19, the WHA limited the number of people allowed in Palais des Nations, home of the United Nations Office in Geneva, and Zhou was one of four IPSF delegates able to enter. Zhou presented two statements to the other delegates from WHO member states: one about the availability, safety, and quality of blood products and the other about the WHO’s Immunization Agenda 2030.

“I found out on the first day of the meeting that I would be delivering a statement, and I was super nervous,” says Zhou. “But we were seated in the outermost ring with a mic in front of us, so it felt like I was in a classroom, which was a relief. Overall, it was a great experience.”

Zhou says the days were long, starting at 9 a.m. and often ending around 8 or 9 p.m. But she valued the opportunity to see how global health policy is decided and enjoyed meeting pharmacy students from around the world and learning about their pharmacy education and practice. She and four other delegates are now working on an article about the experience that they hope to publish in academic pharmacy journals.

Zhou plans to continue volunteering with the IPSF and will stay involved in health care policy, especially as it relates to advocating for the pharmacy profession to play a more active role in global health.

“Our profession has a lot of work to do in advocating for ourselves and what we can do, here at home and internationally,” she says. “If we have more of a voice in international organizations and are involved in high-level policy discussions, pharmacists will become more visible. With our abilities, we could contribute a lot, and the public would also know more about what we can do and entrust their health to us more.”

Originally published by the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy