Virginia

Pharmacy: Committed to Answering Voters Call

Alongside other heroic healthcare professionals, pharmacists and team members throughout the store are committed to meeting the escalating demands of COVID-19. This is what voters are saying about what pharmacies are doing, and what more they could be empowered to do:

85%

say it is easy to access pharmacies – the most accessible healthcare destination tested.

73%

agree: COVID-19 has shown that public health partners like pharmacies are important, and we need to remove barriers like some government regulations that prevent pharmacies from being utilized to the extent possible.

Even before learning more about the role of pharmacists,

79%

say pharmacists should be allowed to provide tests for COVID-19, and

81%

say pharmacists should be allowed to provide a vaccine or other medication to protect against COVID-19, when developed.

Voters are about as likely to agree that:

78%

pharmacists have a role to play in helping patients deal with COVID-19, and

84%

pharmacists have a role to play in helping patients address colds and flu, minor ailments, and management of chronic conditions like diabetes.

Thinking of other recommendations offered by pharmacies amid COVID-19,

75%

support pharmacist-provided telehealth services, such as medication management;

78%

support allowing pharmacy technicians to handle more administrative tasks so pharmacists have more time for patient-care services;

82%

support helping pharmacists make it easier to get medications through early and emergency refills.

This poll was conducted by Morning Consult, and commissioned by NACDS, between March 26 – April 2, 2020 among a national sample of 9,661 Registered Voters.

Responses to the survey questions are modeled via multilevel regression as a function of both individual-level and state-level variables. Models use age, gender, education and race as individual-level predictor variables. For our state-level variables, we chose variables that may influence state-level political and health attitudes such as the percent change in state gross domestic product (GDP), state unemployment rates, state median household income, COVID-19 cases per capita (as of 3/27/2020), state-level insurance rates and state-level outcomes from the 2016 presidential election.

Morning Consult obtained population parameters for registered voters from the November 2016 Current Population Survey. We applied post-stratification weights at the state level based on gender, age, educational attainment and race using the American Community Survey (ACS).