The provision of disease prevention services from community pharmacies.

Although the potential of community pharmacists towards promoting the health of the population has recently been acknowledged by the pharmaceutical profession and the Government, there has been minimal research into community pharmacists' involvement in health promotion. In this study data was collected during semi-structured interviews with 50 pharmacy managers in the North Thames (East) Region of England, and by a questionnaire which was posted to all community pharmacies in the Region, achieving a 59.1% response rate. The interviewees perceived a role for themselves in health promotion, particularly in health education and provision of services, aimed at prevention of coronary heart disease (CHD) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV-) transmission. Of respondents to the questionnaire, the majority (> 93.5%) reported providing advice about smoking cessation; a minority (<13.1%) reported providing blood pressure or cholesterol testing in their pharmacy; at least 39.3% reported availability of leaflets or verbal advice about safe injecting practices for injecting drug misusers (IDMs); 58.2% reported selling sterile injecting equipment to IDMs and 9.8% reported operating an injecting equipment exchange scheme. Qualitative data yielded variables which respondents believed affected their involvement in provision of specific services. Analysis of quantitative data using bivariate and multivariate methods revealed that service providers differed from non-providers with respect to both attitudinal and socio-demographic variables, specific to each service. The research found support for a modified version of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), in that service provision was strongly associated with pharmacists' intention to provide a specific service, but also with perceived customer demand for the service. Perceived customer demand, attitude and subjective norm were strongly associated with pharmacists' intention. It is envisaged that the findings of this research will be of value in maximising the input of pharmacists in disease prevention and optimising their contribution towards the prevention of CHD and HIV-transmission.