The birth of Research in Social & Administrative Pharmacy: a sincere welcome to subscribers, readers, and authors

1. Mission and call for papers 

It is with utmost pride and exhilaration that we welcome subscribers, readers, and authors of papers to Research in Social & Administrative Pharmacy (RSAP), an international journal whose aim is to advance professions involved in the medication use process and promote positive outcomes among the patients they serve through dissemination of results from high-quality scientific work. Research in Social & Administrative Pharmacy concerns itself with research in the following areas:

Research in Social & Administrative Pharmacy will not only publish articles describing theoretical research aimed to identify and test models clarifying relationships among existing phenomena, but will also welcome papers describing applied research useful for practitioners. Research in Social & Administrative Pharmacy seeks to become a leading forum for discussion among scholars proffering models and making methodological arguments toward the study of health care providers, patients, and medication use policy. One of its goals is to become highly regarded among peers, colleagues, and administrators in colleges/schools of pharmacy, public health, medicine, nursing, allied health, and business so that authorship of papers in RSAP will be looked favorably upon for career advancement decisions and for the general recognition of scholars in the field. We hope to encourage high-quality submissions from authors through comprehensive and timely peer reviews, along with prompt, professional communication from the Editor-in-Chief.

2. Medication use and the social and administrative pharmaceutical sciences 

Nations around the world continue to work toward improving individuals' clinical outcomes and health-related quality of life. Advances in medicine and pharmaceutical technology have borne witness to improved survival rates and reductions in morbidity; however, reliance on the biomedical model, alone, is insufficient. Patient adherence to prescribed therapies, ethical considerations in pharmacy benefits design, and efficient medication use systems are tantamount to optimal medication use.

Sound research is critical to advancing the paradigms of health professionals and improving drug therapy outcomes. Unmet needs in medication use still abound. As accessible health care professionals involved in dispensing and medication use counseling, pharmacists are primed for meeting this challenge; however, they cannot and will not do so alone, as this requires collaboration with other health care professionals and support from researchers and policy-makers. Recent evidence suggests that collaborative practice agreements between physicians, pharmacists, and other health care professionals can result in improved adherence to medication and satisfaction with care.1 Additionally, a privately funded, pharmacist-based diabetes care program was shown to facilitate a decrease in all-diagnoses costs.2 In light of these contributions, scholars are called to explore new models for delivering and evaluating care.

Recent debate has focused on paradigm development within the social and administrative pharmaceutical sciences.3 Evidence suggests that like other sciences, it is interdisciplinary, systematic, and logical4; however, it has also been argued that a “vale of silence” pervades the discipline to the extent that ostensibly fundamental breakthroughs are not critically examined or discussed.5 To that end, RSAP seeks to become a primary venue in which such discussion will occur and therefore will publish the following types of articles:

Research articles describe experimental or observational investigations that used formal methods for data collection and reporting of results.

Proposed models are comprehensive, well-executed articles that seek to propose and advance for scholarly discourse a model to guide future research or practice.

Reviews are comprehensive, well-referenced descriptive articles on research topics directly related to clinical practice, medication use policy, or other relevant phenomena.

Commentaries are editorials on philosophical issues, policies, methodological arguments, or other pertinent subjects.

Letters to the Editor serve as a forum for the expression of ideas or for commenting on matters of interest. It is also an avenue for critiquing or expanding on the information presented in a previously published article.

3. In this issue 

The diversity of research interests and topics in common pursuit of the goals outlined in the Journal's mission is readily apparent within its inaugural issue. Cline6 provides an empirical investigation of the cognitive processes that older adults use in developing their evaluations of prescription drug benefit plans. The results have momentous implications in the design of Medicare pharmacy plans and successful enrollment strategies. Using grounded theory methodology, Viswanathan and Lambert7 explore medication use perceptions among African American hypertensive patients. The results corroborate efforts of previous researchers looking into the meanings of other illnesses; however, they uncovered an important distinction in that the achievement of lifestyle modifications impact on a positive self-concept, from which important disease management strategies can be tailored. Briggs and Jackson8 used a novel and effective tool (Rasch modeling) to assess patient anticoagulation knowledge, which will provide pharmacists with direction for anticoagulation management education that is targeted to each patient's specific needs. Wutoh et al9 examined a growing population of Americans that previously have been ignored by researchers: older human immunodeficiency virus–infected adults. Their findings suggest that these patients' perceptions of antiretrovials and alternative therapies affect their actual usage of these treatments and thus shed light on the design of interventions to improve their medication-taking behavior and health outcomes. Barner and Branvold10 explore patients' willingness-to-pay for pharmacist consultations regarding menopause and hormone replacement therapy. The study is the first of its kind to evaluate services for these particular patients, who may suffer from vasomotor, cognitive, and genitourinary symptoms. The results of the study corroborate those of other studies that point to a need for pharmacists to promote their knowledge and skills in niche areas. Einarson11 proposes the Authority/Pharmacotherapy Model as a “macro” view of the drug use process in an attempt to guide future research in medication use evaluations. The model facilitates the transfer of knowledge about the structures, processes, and outcomes to and from individuals at different levels of care and provides a framework that could facilitate interdisciplinary research to address issues in medication use. The inaugural issue of RSAP concludes with insightful commentaries by McLean and Garis,12 who suggest that the profit margins of pharmacy benefit managers vary according to whether they are viewed as principals or as agents in their transactions, and by van Grootheest and de Jong-van den Berg,13 who point out disparities in pharmacists' reporting of adverse drug reactions worldwide.

We hope that you enjoy reading this and subsequent issues of RSAP and also that its contents serve to stimulate your own research ideas.