Pharmacy's collaboration with Kenya wins prestigious engagement award

A Purdue program that pairs faculty and students in the College of Pharmacy with counterparts in Kenya has been named a regional winner of the C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Award.

The announcement marks the first time Purdue has been honored in the eight-year history of the prestigious award. The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, a nonprofit educational association, sponsor the award.

The Magrath Award, based on the 2003 Kellogg Commission report on the future of state and land-grant universities, is intended to recognize institutions that have redesigned learning, discovery and engagement to develop stronger links within communities.

The winning effort is called the Purdue Kenya Program, and it is an exemplar that incorporates each of these aspects into a highly effective program, says Steve Abel, Purdue's associate vice president for engagement. PKP began in 2003, when the College of Pharmacy partnered with the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) consortium in Eldoret, Kenya.

PKP seeks to build sustainable access to high-quality health care for the 3.5 million people in AMPATH's surrounding area. It also seeks to foster development of globally engaged students, according to Purdue's Magrath award submission.

In the past decade, PKP has grown to consist of a team of four College of Pharmacy faculty members, including two based in Kenya. PKP also involves 20 Kenyan pharmacists -- seven of whom have received postgraduate training through the program -- 48 pharmacy technologists, five research assistants and 25 support staff.

The team works in Kenya to provide care with an emphasis on diabetes, rheumatic heart disease, cancer and HIV in ambulatory and in-patient settings. It serves more than 160,000 patients annually using progressive care models previously considered impossible in the developing world, according to the award submission.

Additionally, PKP involves partnerships between Purdue and Moi University School of Medicine and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, both in Eldoret. Part of the program involves hosting Purdue students in Kenya and providing six-month internships to students from the University of Nairobi.

In the future, PKP plans to share its practice model with professionals in other resource-strained areas, such as India, Namibia and Tanzania, according to the submission.

As a regional winner of the Magrath award, Purdue will receive a plaque and a $5,000 cash prize during the Engagement Scholarship Consortium's national conference. It will be held in Orlando on Nov. 2-4.

The project also will be automatically considered for the national Magrath award, which will be announced during the conference. The national award includes a sculpture and a $20,000 cash prize.

For more information about the Magrath award, see its website.