Meeting evolving community needs with Generation Rx

A letter from Kelsey Schmuhl, PharmD '17, BCACP, BSPS '12
Director of Harm Reduction and Prevention
Assistant Professor - Clinical

I remember sitting in my Introduction to Pharmacy class when Ken Hale, RPh, PhD, former professor of pharmacy practice, told us that more people in Ohio die every day from an accidental drug overdose than a car accident.  

While that statistic may not surprise us today, it was staggering to an 18-year-old in 2009. After class, I asked Dr. Hale how I could get more involved in combatting this issue. Little did I know the impact that conversation as an Ohio State freshman would have on my career.  

He introduced me to Generation Rx, a community outreach and safe medication educational program that he had recently co-founded with Dr. Nicole Kwiek. I was excited to get involved in any way I could.  

Through Generation Rx, I had the opportunity to volunteer in the Columbus community and educate others for the first time. I visited schools, health fairs, conferences and other community events across Ohio. It was here that I began to learn how to tailor medication safety messaging to a variety of audiences. These experiences undoubtedly sparked a love for community engagement and showed me the impact that a pharmacist can have on patients outside of traditional pharmacy settings.  

In my 16 years with the project, I have witnessed Generation Rx become a trusted community partner across the country, providing safe medication use messaging for students, health care professionals, educators and affected families. I have been fortunate to grow alongside the program, from undergraduate student to Doctor of Pharmacy candidate to academic fellow to project faculty and now, its director.  

What started in 2007 at the College of Pharmacy as an educational program with a single slide deck has grown into a suite of dozens of resources reaching people of all ages across the U.S. Our portfolio of partners has grown to include OSU Extension, Girl Scouts, 4-H and Sorority and Fraternity Life. As director, I will continue Generation Rx’s evolution to address the changing needs of our communities. 

The opioid epidemic of the late 2000s is not the same as what we are seeing today. What started as a prescription opioid problem morphed into a heroin epidemic and most recently, an epidemic dominated by high-potency synthetic opioids and polysubstance use.  

Additionally, our society is much more connected than when Generation Rx was founded. Information is constantly at our fingertips. While advances in technology are beneficial in many ways, they also have allowed easier access to substances, especially in the adolescent and young adult age groups.  

I strongly believe that Generation Rx must adapt to meet these needs. This means expanding our content to include education on counterfeit pills and research-based, age-appropriate resources on overdose risk reduction for caregivers. 

With a renewed focus that extends beyond primary prevention and prescription-only medications, Generation Rx will begin a journey down a path we have not yet traveled. We will explore best practices to provide education across the continuum of care, including prevention, treatment and recovery. We will also delve into non-prescription substances that are impacting our communities such as cannabis, illicitly manufactured fentanyl and more.  

While Generation Rx will hold true to its roots in prevention, this expanded lens will allow us to direct harm reduction messaging and resources to audiences most in need, based on our data. Along the way, we will ensure that our students leave Ohio State with a firm understanding of their role in addressing substance use and acquire the skills and confidence to implement what they have learned in their careers. 

As a student 16 years ago, Generation Rx made substance-use prevention, treatment and recovery the focus of my career. The program has grown and evolved thanks to Drs. Hale and Kwiek, along with the faculty, staff, students, educators and partners across the country, who have made Generation Rx what it is today.  

They laid the foundation, and I am ready to start building.