A Community in Crisis: The Intersection of Health Insurance and Diabetes

Presenter: Mark-Joel Abaso Tsopanzang, Neurobiology & Physiology, Global Public Health Scholars

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For my practicum I chose to work at CVS pharmacy as a pharmacy technician. I chose to work as a pharmacy technician because I felt that it would be a good opportunity to get a closer look into the world of healthcare. I also felt that it would be appropriate because it would allow me to directly interact and have first hand experience with some of the concepts we discussed in GPH. As a pharmacy tech my roles comprised of logging doctor written prescriptions, verifying prescriptions, filling orders, sorting prescriptions, processing insurance disputes, and selling prescriptions. For most of my time, I worked at the drive thru window and the drop off station which made my primary roles logging prescriptions, selling, and processing insurance. My time as a pharmacy tech taught me a lot about a wide variety of drugs and their function. I learned about the roles of different drugs, patient safety regulations, improved customer service, and knowledge of the processes that need to happen in order for people to receive their medication. The most relevant thing I learned in relation to global public health was knowledge of how different socioeconomic factors can have an impact on a person's health equity. A common experience I observed and assisted with in the pharmacy was the lack of insurance coverage that prevented people from getting access to their diabetic medication such as Novalog, Ozempic, and Humalog. Further research showed me how this lack of access to suitable insurance is affected by factors such as class, educational disparities, and income disparities. Overall this experience helped shape my current understanding of global public health and made me more aware of what these factors are and how they affect people in the real world.