Community healthcare
As an organisation focused on pharmacy-led health and beauty, promoting and supporting a range of initiatives that improve the health and wellbeing of the communities in which we serve is a natural position for us to take.
Supporting The Eve Appeal
As part of Boots UK’s ongoing support of The Eve Appeal, we hosted the pilot phase of an innovative new research project in a Boots store in North West London.
The Genetic Cancer Prediction through Population Screening (GCaPPS) project is a groundbreaking trial involving the genetic testing of the healthy Ashkenazi Jewish population to identify women and men at higher risk of breast, ovarian and prostate cancer and offer options for early detection and prevention.
One in 40 Ashkenazi Jews carries the faulty gene which increases the likelihood of developing certain cancers.
This is around 10 to 20 times higher than the general (non-Ashkenazi Jewish) population. We provided space in our Mill Hill store in North London for counselling and collection of blood samples, which gave an invaluable outreach into the community. In addition, we helped produce information and educational materials for the study.
Alphega Pharmacy raising awareness
In line with its ethical, advisory and service aims, Alphega Pharmacy, our European network of independent pharmacists, runs a European programme of thematic and prevention campaigns throughout the year. The initiatives are mainly designed for the benefit of the patient and the consumer, but they also help reinforce the role of the pharmacy as an ethical provider of primary healthcare services in the community. For example, in the first six months of 2009, Alphega Pharmacy members from France, Spain, the Czech Republic and Russia launched a campaign to raise public awareness of the risks of high blood pressure. Participating pharmacies provided patients with a pre-diagnosis screening service as well taking the opportunity to inform and educate the public.
Boots Opticians - supporting the homeless
Since 2008, in partnership with Visioncare, a UK charity set up to provide eyecare services to homeless and other vulnerable people, Boots Opticians has provided resources to support a walk-in eye clinic in London. Every month, at the London Homeless Centre in Victoria, one optometrist and one dispensing optician run a free service enabling people to turn up and have their eyes examined, select free new spectacles from a range, have them glazed and return to pick them up later. This initiative has proved a success, and in December 2008 Boots Opticians extended similar support to a monthly clinic at Visioncare's practice at a homeless centre in Snow Hill, Birmingham.
Giving for good health
Our Italian pharmaceutical wholesale business continued to support charities focused on improving healthcare in the community throughout 2008/09. During the year, health related donations included around £8,300 to community-based charity Associazione Malati del Tigullio (Tigullio Area Sufferers Association), £8,300 to the cardiology department at the hospital in Lavagna, £8,300, to the ‘association of neuroblastoma’ in conjunction with the Gaslini hospital in Genoa, and a further £3,300 to Associazione Mus-e Italia Onlus, which promotes a three year project to support children experiencing difficulties in their family situations and community integration.
