
All publications

FIPWiSE 2024 Activity Report
11 February 2025
Global pharmacy trends and implications for self-care: Report from a FIP insight board
15 November 2024This report explores the changing role of pharmacists in promoting self-care worldwide.
It highlights the impact of COVID-19 on public trust in pharmacy services, the rise of digital healthcare, and the challenges posed by workforce shortages. The report emphasises the importance of enhancing health literacy and equitable access to care while providing recommendations for leveraging pharmacy practice to improve self-care initiatives.

Global vaccination policy development summit
1 July 2024Executive summary
This report summarises the key insights and outcomes of FIP's global vaccination policy development summit held in April 2024.
It highlights the growing role of pharmacists in life-course immunisation, discusses challenges and opportunities in vaccine delivery, and outlines the next steps for developing a global policy framework.

Advancing pharmacy practices in vaccination: Preparing for winter
31 January 2024Report from a FIP insight board
This report summarises key insights from an FIP insight board discussion on strategies for pharmacies to address the increased risk of flu and other communicable diseases during the winter months.

Advancing pharmacy practices in vaccination: Unlocking vaccine confidence
13 January 2024Report from a FIP insight board
This report summarises insights from an FIP discussion on strategies to build vaccine confidence and the role of pharmacists in enhancing vaccine acceptance.
The report highlights effective communication, health literacy, stakeholder collaboration, media engagement, and lessons from COVID-19.

Gender-based disparities in the management of pain in pharmacy: “The gender pain gap”
2 January 2024A literature review
This literature review aims to identify the elements contributing to this gap, exploring the biopsychosocial elements that contribute to the different pain experiences of men and women and understanding the role of healthcare providers, including pharmacists, in both perpetuating and addressing these differences.

Advancing pharmacy practices in vaccination: Reaching at-risk and vulnerable groups
1 January 2024
The role of pharmacists in closing the gender pain gap
1 November 2023Report from an international insight board
This report focuses on the critical role of pharmacists in addressing the gender pain gap.
It also highlights the disparities in pain treatment experienced by women, often resulting from unconscious biases and stereotypes. The insight board emphasises the need for pharmacists to be aware of these biases and to adopt a gender-responsive approach to pain management. It suggests that education and training are essential in equipping pharmacists with the skills to provide equitable patient-centred care. This report also mentions the influence of culture and race on pain perception and management, advocating for a more inclusive healthcare system. Additionally, it underscores the importance of interprofessional collaboration in closing the gender pain gap, ensuring that all healthcare professionals are aligned in their efforts to provide fair and effective pain management for all genders.

Vaccination: Benefits beyond specific disease prevention
1 October 2023Summaries from the FIP digital events programme
This report summarises key insights from a series of digital events on the importance of vaccination beyond just preventing illness.
The report highlights the role of pharmacists in vaccination efforts, the need for equitable access to vaccines across all stages of life, and the importance of learning from past experiences like the COVID-19 pandemic to build on efforts and promote the understanding and benefits of vaccination for public health

Supporting life-course immunisation through pharmacy-based vaccination: enabling equity, access and sustainability: A toolkit for pharmacists
1 September 2023This toolkit aims to enable equity, access, and sustainability of life-course immunisation through pharmacy-based vaccination and it is a valuable resource for pharmacists looking to expand their role in supporting immunisation efforts and improving public health outcomes.

Health inclusivity, agency and empowerment: Developing solutions to help pharmacists drive better health outcomes
3 July 2023
Pandemic preparedness, response and recovery
1 July 2023Lessons learnt for global pharmacy
The key learnings for pharmacy are presented in this report in six sections focusing on lessons from country leadership,
system transformation, science and innovation, pharmaceutical practice, workforce and education, and life-course
immunisation.

Pharmacists’ support in pain management across genders
1 June 2023Report from a FIP insight board
The insight board aimed to explore how pharmacists can be more effectively involved in pain management for both men and women, including screening for pain-related conditions, identifying opportunities for interventions, and determining training needs for pharmacists.

Identifying pharmacy-led actions for improving health literacy
1 May 2023This report provides a summary of a roundtable discussion on strategies to enhance health literacy through pharmacy interventions.
Key areas include increasing pharmacists’ awareness of their role in health literacy, integrating pharmacy roles within the healthcare system, and improving patient awareness of pharmacy services. The report emphasises the need for pharmacists to manage time effectively, develop educational programmes for healthcare professionals, and overcome language barriers. It advocates for patient-centered care, utilizing behavioural change models, and professional collaboration. The report showcases the impact of these actions on health outcomes and concludes with a call for continued efforts to improve health literacy globally.

Vaccination of special-risk groups: A toolkit for pharmacists
1 December 2022This toolkit not only highlights the important role that pharmacists can play in improving vaccination coverage rates among special-risk groups but also summarises key information, practice guidelines and additional resources to support this role in a very practical manner.
This includes a brief introduction of why each group has a higher risk of harm from vaccine-preventable diseases, which vaccines are particularly recommended for that group, what advice pharmacists may provide to individuals they identify from those groups and a practical case study that may support conversations.

Advocating expansion of the pharmacist's role in immunsation: A focus on diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis booster, COVID-19 and meningitis vaccinations
1 December 2022This report aims to support pharmacist organisations worldwide in claiming or expanding their role in immunisation and to accelerate policy development and transformation in the area of immunisation and provides guidance on how pharmacists can advocate for the expansion of their role in immunisation, including how to engage with patients, policymakers, and other healthcare professionals.

The role of pharmacists in promoting female intimate wellness: Report from an international insight board
1 October 2022This report explores the critical role pharmacists play in women’s health, particularly in the area of intimate wellness.
It discusses the gender pain gap in healthcare and the importance of pharmacists’ awareness of gender inequalities in pain research and treatment. The report highlights the need for pharmacists to address unconscious bias in pain management and to develop knowledge, attitudes, and practices that close the gender pain gap. It also outlines how pharmacists can be supported through training and tools to address gender inequalities in pain management. The insights and potential lessons learned from the report aim to forward the pharmacy profession’s contribution to closing the gender pain gap and achieving behavioural change towards women’s health needs.

Empowering self-care
1 September 2022A handbook for pharmacists
This handbook aims to provide the pharmacy workforce with relevant and concise guidance on coaching practices and person-centred approaches to promoting and engaging in self-care in six areas (sore throat, gastrointestinal complaints, musculoskeletal pain, children's fever, sexual health, disinfection and the pharmacy) of frequent consultations.

Enabling positive practice environments for women in science and education with FIPWiSE toolkit
30 August 2022Positive practice environments (PPEs) support the recruitment and retention of employees, enable the delivery of high-quality work outcomes, and benefit society as a whole.
It is necessary to provide equal rights, obligations, equal treatment, and opportunities for all genders according to their needs to achieve gender equity and PPEs in workplaces. FIP developed the FIPWiSE (the FIP Women in Science and Education initiative) toolkit for positive practice environments for women in science and education to support and enable them by building on the World Health Professional Alliances (WHPA) PPE campaign. FIP is a founding member of the WHPA and used the toolkit as a basis to describe and identify factors that enable PPEs from a pharmaceutical science and pharmacy education perspective. The toolkit provides a set of possible solutions related to women in science and education for individuals, employers, institutions, and policymakers, as well as real-life exam.

Toolkit: FIPWiSE toolkit for positive practice environments for women in science and education
8 October 2021FIP’s initiative for Women in Science and Education has built on the World Health Professions Alliance (WHPA) Positive Practice Environments Campaign and developed the “FIPWiSE toolkit for positive practice environments for women in science and education” (FIPWiSE toolkit) to identify and address inequalities in workplace environments that affect women in these fields.
The toolkit is designed to raise awareness and provide possible solutions for individuals, employers and institutions that can enable positive practice environments for women in pharmaceutical sciences and pharmacy education, and provides learnings that are transferable across the entire pharmaceutical workforce.
In the FIPWiSE toolkit, you can explore key factors that have influence on practice environments and find practical solutions to enable positive practice environments tailored for professionals in science and education, employers (e.g., academic and research institutions, pharmaceutical industry) and policy makers (e.g., national professional bodies).
The FIPWiSE toolkit includes interviews on positive practice environments with Dr Roopa Dhatt, executive director of Women in Global Health, USA, and Howard Catton, WHPA 2021 chair and CEO of the International Council of Nurses, Switzerland.
We invite you to utilise the FIPWiSE toolkit to stand up for positive practice environments by:
- Circulating it on your social media, across your educational and scientific networks, in your university or organisation’s newsletters, and at events and lectures you attend;
- Amplifying the campaign messages by sharing the social media cards (which can be found in FIPWiSE toolkit Chapter 4) on your social media, or on your presentations;
- Printing and displaying the campaign poster (which can be found in FIPWiSE toolkit Chapter 4) at your workplace to pledge your commitment to positive practice environments;
- Chairing sessions on positive practice environments at conferences, giving keynote speeches, and presenting the FIPWiSE toolkit at national meetings;
- Running workshops to educate your employees on the benefits of positive practice environments;
- Using the case studies in the FIPWiSE toolkit to make the case for positive practice environments to your employer or government;
- Advocating with government and other key decision makers to mainstream positive practice environments; and
- Celebrating if your workplace is already a positive practice environment and sharing your good practices with FIP at equity@fip.org.

Building vaccine confidence and communicating vaccine value - A toolkit for pharmacists
1 May 2021This toolkit is designed to empower pharmacists with the knowledge and tools necessary to build trust in vaccines among their teams, patients, and communities.
It provides key resources for vaccine education, addressing misinformation, and advocating for patient vaccination. The toolkit includes infographics, videos, and interactive content to explain the importance of vaccines, along with conversation starters and strategies for engaging with vaccine-hesitant individuals. It also emphasises the role of healthcare professionals in promoting health equity and ensuring culturally safe communication. This resource is a comprehensive guide for pharmacists to enhance vaccine confidence and support public health initiatives.

FIPWiSE 2020 activity report
16 December 2020Celebrating FIPWiSE achievements and highlights from FIPWiSE’s story over 2020.

Give it a shot: Expanding immunisation coverage through pharmacists
1 January 2020FIP aims to further demonstrate pharmacists' commitment and impact in increasing vaccination coverage and uptake through a multitude of roles, including vaccine administration.

FIP Statement of Policy on pharmacists supporting women and responsible use of medicines - Empowering informal carers
1 December 2019This FIP Statement of Policy focuses on empowering informal carers, particularly women, who often undertake unpaid healthcare roles.
It acknowledges the disproportionate amount of care work performed by women and the need for their empowerment, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The policy highlights the unique position of pharmacists to support these caregivers through education, information, and advocacy, thereby enhancing the responsible use of medicines. It underscores the importance of recognising and valuing the contribution of women as informal carers in healthcare systems and the role of pharmacists in facilitating their work and ensuring better health outcomes.

EquityRx collection: Inclusion for all, equity for all
1 April 2019The collection emphasises the importance of inclusion and equity, showcasing efforts to champion women in pharmacy and health, and aligns with global strategies for women’s workforce participation.
It is a call to action for transformative policies and initiatives that promote gender equity and support the role of women in science and academia, as well as in informal caregiving roles.

Supporting young professionals and students against COVID-19 related disruptions to education and research
1 April 2019
Pharmacists supporting women and responsible use of medicines
1 December 2018This report focuses on the important role pharmacists play in empowering women, particularly as informal caregivers.
It acknowledges the significant, often unpaid, contribution of women to global healthcare and the unique position of pharmacists to support them. The report discusses the challenges faced by women in accessing quality healthcare and the potential of pharmacists to improve health literacy and medicine use. It also examines the impact of caregiving on women’s health and advocates for policies that recognise and support their role in healthcare delivery.

The Effective Utilization of Pharmacists in Improving Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH)
1 January 2013This policy statement focuses on the vital role of pharmacists in enhancing maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH).
It highlights the significant contribution pharmacists can make to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, particularly in reducing child mortality and improving maternal health. The statement details how pharmacists can support pre-pregnancy care through education and health promotion, provide comprehensive care during pregnancy, and ensure effective postnatal care. It also defines the scope of maternal and child health and emphasises the importance of pharmacists in preparing, obtaining, distributing, and disposing of medical products safely. The policy advocates for pharmacists to be actively involved in medication therapy management, patient health assessment, and the provision of health-related information, aiming to improve overall MNCH outcomes.