I always like to talk to dynamic people who are making a
difference in their communities. Since most of my career has been spent helping
people with their medicines, I know that medication can not work if a
patient doesn't take it. In that vein, I recently had a great interview with Ursula
Chizhik of FLAVORx. See the highlights
of our talk:
What are the barriers to patients being compliant with their
medication regimens?
One of the barriers
is the taste of the medication. There
are some meds that are notorious for having a bad taste and the pharmaceutical industry
goes to great lengths in order to mask their flavor/smell. Two good examples of this are ibuprofen and
metformin...
What do you do if it is a child that has to take a
medication during the short term (three to ten days)? Well most people just grin and bear it and
believe that medication is supposed to taste bad!
But what happens when the child has to take a medication for
a chronic condition and the medication has an unappealing taste? I can remember when I was a child and my mom
would give me medicine when I was sick.
She would either give everything with honey or give me the medicine with
an "orange chaser" (that's when she would peel an orange before
giving me the spoon, so I could eat that orange immediately after taking my
medicine). It didn't always work, I
still tasted the bitterness of the meds that I had to take.
What if you had a flavoring option for your child's
medication? Please know that does exist
and that there is hope for patients and their parents/caregivers!
I recently was able
to sit down with Ursula Chizhik who is Director of Pharmacy Programs at FLAVORx
and we had a really great discussion about this issue. We talked about it from two perspectives, you
see we are moms who are also pharmacists.
In Ursula's own words,
"
As a pharmacist and a mom, I understand the difficulty and the stress related
to medication-time for children and parents from behind the counter, as well as
in front of the counter. This dual
perspective encourages me to empathize more with sick children and better
understand and support frustrated parents.
My unique position here at FLAVORx enables me to educate other health
care providers about the importance of recognizing taste and palatability as a
barrier to medication adherence in the pediatric population, and to understand
how we can better support caregivers to ensure that they follow through with
administering medication to their children."
If
you are challenged in giving medication to your child, know that you are not
alone. Did you know that:
·
Studies suggest that adherence rates for
pediatric medications are typically between 50-60%.
·
79% of children complain about bad tasting
medicine or taste that is “too yucky.”
·
7 in 10 parents report a moderate to severe
struggle giving a child medicine because of how it tastes
·
Studies have shown that adherence with liquid
medicine improves to 90% or higher when children choose the taste of their
medicine.
·
Finally, 72.4 % of parents would find a custom
medication flavoring service very valuable.
What
is FLAVORx?
FLAVORx
was founded over 15 years ago by a man named Kenny Kramm whose family owned a pharmacy in the Washington D.C. area. He had a simple idea that that the taste of
medicine should never come between a child and his or her good health. It started at his family owned community pharmacy
with one flavor, banana. It was
developed for a child having serious difficulty taking anti-seizure medication.
The condition was life-threatening and the fact that this little girl wouldn’t
take her awful-tasting medicine was making things much worse.
After much experimentation, they hit on a
successful formula. That little girl was
able to take her banana- flavored medicine without any problems, her seizures
subsided, and that’s when they had their “Aha” moment. In 2007, the current CEO of FLAVORx, Stuart Amos, took over the company, but the
mission remains the same. Now the
company has several flavoring options and even has a product that makes it
easier for patients that have difficulty swallowing, take their solid dosage
forms (tablets, capsules).
Their mission is founded on the idea that medicines can't
work if people don't take them. This is
so true and it is good to know that there is a company that desires to improve
medication adherence by making a potentially stressful situation become less
daunting for both parents and children.
This is how FLAVORx helps patients:
·
They help people take their medicine so they can
get better faster.
·
FLAVORx offers personalization and choice (There
are over 21 unique flavor options available for parents and children to choose
from).
·
FLAVORx
reduces stress commonly associated with the medicine time experience (By
improving the taste of medicine, and giving kids a choice of flavor options,
FLAVORx turns medicine time into a more pleasant experience for everyone).
·
FLAVORx improves health outcomes and wellness.
·
FLAVORx is safe and effective (FLAVORx flavors
are sugar-free, non-allergenic, dye-free, sodium-free, phosphate-free,
gluten-free, and casein-free) and again it is important to reiterate that our
flavors are being used in over 45,000 pharmacies and we have flavored over
60,000,000 liquid medicines to date without compromising safety or efficacy.
In my practice, I have come across the use of flavoring
agents to mask the taste of certain medicines but when I spoke with Ursula, her
passion and enthusiasm really shined through.
The fact is that in the world that we are a part of, people want to have
everything customized. It says that this
is mine, it was made just for me and there is a movement to do this with
medications.
This was a great interview!
I got to learn more about this great company! This
is exciting to me this option was not
present when I was a child and I am glad that this option is available
now. I wish them much success!
Thank you Ursula!
Ursula Chizhik, PharmD was a retail
pharmacist for 11 years before making the switch to join the FLAVORx team
nearly 4 years ago. FLAVORx has been helping children take their medicine since
1994. She is now the resident pharmacist and Director of Pharmacy Programs at
FLAVORx Inc. In her current position, she is able to integrate her many
years of practical pharmacy experience to bring an element of “real world
pharmacy” to FLAVORx. Having experienced the peaks and valleys of being a
pharmacist behind the counter, coupled with being a mom on the other side of
the counter, she is able to tap into those experiences every day as she
explores effective ways to reach out to and educate parents and
providers. Improving the child-parent-provider encounter to facilitate
more positive medication experiences and subsequent positive health outcomes is
her primary focus. Ursula lives in West Friendship, Maryland with
her husband and 2 sons. She welcomes you to contact her via email at
uchizhik@flavorx.com or via telephone at 1-800-884-5771 ext. 238.
