Community Pharmacy Scotland (CPS) officials met SNP leaders at the party conference in Aberdeen on Friday to pitch for investment in community pharmacy.
CPS Chief Executive Matt Barclay and Policy & Public Relations Pharmacist Sarah Staddon met with MSPs working in health and social care.
They also attended the Women’s Health and Holyrood Health Hub fringe events. Sarah said: “It was a busy day representing Community Pharmacy Scotland, attending the Women’s Health and Holyrood Health Hub fringe events and making sure community pharmacy is part of the conversation.”
Barclay and Staddon used the occasion to share CPS’s manifesto priorities, "Delivering healthier communities across Scotland", which sets out how pharmacy teams in over 1,200 community pharmacies can do even more to prevent, detect and treat ill health, close to home and without an appointment.
Conversations focused on the manifesto’s seven ambitions, including:
- a national NHS weight loss service delivered through community pharmacy
- targeted diabetes and cardiovascular screening programmes
- further investment in NHS Pharmacy First Scotland, with more treatment protocols and an expanded prescribing role
- a suite of women’s health services
- better digital infrastructure and information sharing, including support for paperless dispensing
The Women’s Health fringe event was a particular opportunity to highlight community pharmacy’s long-standing role as the leading provider of free NHS emergency contraception, and the potential to extend services.
With 90% of adults visiting a pharmacy at least once a year, and almost 1.9 million people using NHS Pharmacy First Scotland in the year to September 2024, CPS believes the network is ideally placed to ease pressure on the wider NHS.
