(104) Outcomes from an Interprofessional Seminar to Assess and Address the Digital Divide

Objective : To assess an interprofessional seminar preparing students to address health inequities exacerbated by an expansion of digital health technologies.

Methods: School of Pharmacy and the College of Osteopathic Medicine faculty developed a two-hour interactive seminar focused on identifying and overcoming barriers to digital health modalities. Second year Doctor of Pharmacy and first year Masters of Biomedical Science students completed a digital literacy assessment, examined how barriers impacted a patient case focused on digital inclusion, and applied community resources and tools to bridge the digital divide. Students completed a pre and post seminar questionnaire assessing their knowledge of the intended learning objectives that faculty scored on a scale of 1-4. Additionally, the pharmacy students were assessed again 3 months later with the same questionnaire and a new patient case to assess long term retention. Pre and post responses were compared with a Wilcoxon-Rank test, while the pre, post, and longitudinal responses were compared with Friedman's test.

Results: The median score for describe the "digital divide" and identify related barriers increased from 2 to 3 (p < 0.001). These changes were retained on the longitudinal assessment with a median score of 3 (p < 0.001) for both items. When identifying resources to address barriers, the median score increased from 2 on the pre-test to a 4 on both the post-test and on the longitudinal assessment (p <.0001 and p=0.000). At 3 months, 100% of the pharmacy students were able to identify barriers and 98.6% provided an appropriate resource to address the barriers in a patient case.

Conclusions: Students ability to assess and address the digital divide increased as a result of a 2-hour interprofessional seminar with evidence of long-term retention.