Reaching Beyond the Classroom
Amidst the hustle and bustle of pharmacy school, with its rigorous coursework and demanding schedules, there are students who still find time to reach beyond the classroom walls to diverse communities. Hunter Eldien is one of those students. Throughout the course of pharmacy school, community engagement has inarguably been a key element of his pharmacy education experience.
Leading Outreach to Diverse Communities
As the Patient Care Coordinator for Minnesota Pharmacy Student Alliance (MPSA), Hunter has led several different patient care operations, coordinating health events that connected fellow pharmacy students with community members throughout the Duluth area and beyond.
"Some of the groups that I was involved with throughout the community and surrounding areas included the Grand Rapids YMCA, where we focused on elderly citizens and patients from more rural settings," Hunter explains.
He also worked extensively with the Duluth Lions Club, organizing events that served the urban Duluth community, and helped with the Women's Health Expo. Hosted annually, this Expo serves as both a health resource hub as well as an inspirational and invigorating gathering space for women, attracting people from the surrounding rural areas.
For Hunter, a particularly meaningful initiative was the Minnesota MOM (Mission of Mercy) Dental Event, which Hunter helped launch in its first year. "It was really targeted towards underserved populations in Duluth, those who don't traditionally have access to dental services," he shares. At this event, patients received free dental procedures, and pharmacy students educated them about antibiotics and/or other medications they received.
Beyond these efforts through his involvement in MPSA, Hunter also volunteered at the HOPE (Health of People Everywhere) Clinic, an interprofessional free student-run clinic where he worked collaboratively with medical students to provide medical and social care to underserved populations in Duluth. He also participated in the annual immunization efforts at the Minnesota State Fair.
Making Impact . . . Beyond the Numbers
The impact of these efforts extends beyond personal growth for Hunter, to tangible community benefits. Through the MPSA patient care coordinator position, seven events reached 323 patients in the Duluth area alone during a single year, providing point-of-care testing and education from student pharmacists or pharmacist preceptors.
At just one event—the Duluth Lions Club pancake day in 2024—the team screened 86 people for potential diabetes or prediabetes. "We were able to identify potentially 14 people, community members who may have had levels suggestive of prediabetes or maybe even diabetes and then appropriately referred them to their primary care provider," Hunter recounts.
But beyond the numbers, individual interactions proved most memorable and impactful for Hunter. For instance, at the Grand Rapids Health Fair, Hunter recalls providing nutritional advice to a patient seeking to lower their cholesterol through lifestyle changes before resorting to medication.
"I'm passionate about nutrition. I believe that food is truly medicine," he explains. "I felt like I was able to make a difference for her, give her some path as far as where do I go next to take health in my own hands, improve my well-being before I resort to medication."
Another significant outcome, a hallmark of community engagement, was establishing lasting relationships between the College of Pharmacy and community organizations. "Getting to actually establish that relationship... showing them that we show up, what types of patient care skills we have as pharmacy students, I think was really impactful," he reflects. These connections ensure that community events can continue year after year, with organizations confident that student pharmacists will not only participate, but engage in meaningful ways and provide professional service to the community.
From Community Engagement to Professional Practice
These experiences have shaped how Hunter views his future role in healthcare. The opportunities he has had to interact with diverse populations have given even more purpose to the strong pharmacological knowledge base built through pharmacy education. "Being able to take knowledge from courses and actually apply them to real-life patients in real-life situations really helped me to become a stronger pharmacist overall in many different ways," he notes.
The leadership experiences taught him how to effectively motivate others: "How do I ignite that same passion in others? Show them the importance of the event for them." But perhaps the most important takeaway for Hunter is how these experiences have provided him with a deeper understanding of healthcare disparities and gaps in the system. "It helped me to have a better sense of what issues people are facing in real life, how disparities really manifest in the real world, and how that influences the care we give."
Advice for Future Pharmacy Students
When asked what advice he would give to incoming pharmacy students about community engagement, Hunter emphasized the need to step outside of one’s comfort zones. He shares that "If I was a P1 and someone had talked me through the things that I would have been doing over the next two or three years, I would have gotten nervous, anxious about it, and I would have said, absolutely not. It really took a step out of my comfort zone. And I think that's what these years of learning are all about."
Hunter therefore encourages students to pursue experiences that make them uncomfortable, as these situations often provide the greatest growth. "The uncomfortable interactions with patients are sometimes the most impactful, the ones where you're put on the spot or need to come up with a complex solution really quickly." He counsels that by embracing these challenges during pharmacy school, students can identify their weaknesses and develop into stronger practitioners ready to serve their communities with confidence and expertise.
Looking ahead . . .
Hunter is excited to continue his community-engaged efforts as a resident at Essentia Health in Duluth.
Through his community-engaged experiences, Hunter’s perspective of pharmacy practice has shifted dramatically, with the profound realization that for many individuals, the pharmacist represents their most consistent (and sometimes only) link to the healthcare system.
"Sometimes as pharmacists, we assume that our patients are receiving healthcare services beyond us... but sometimes the pharmacist, you as the pharmacist, you are the ones providing some of the only healthcare services that patient is going to receive over the course of the year."
This profound insight has made him more mindful of what might be missing from the patient's healthcare picture and what he can do to address those gaps, as a pharmacist.
