Amy Lamb was born and raised in Prince Albert, where she now works. (University of Saskatchewan)

By Alison Sandstrom

Improving access to healthcare

P.A. pharmacist named ‘One to Watch’ by University of Saskatchewan

Mar 23, 2021 | 12:55 PM

A Prince Albert pharmacist is being honoured with an award from the University of Saskatchewan. Amy Lamb, the 2021 recipient of the university’s One to Watch Alumni Achievement Award, told paNOW she’s humbled to receive the designation and hopes it opens new doors for her to collaborate with other innovators in the health sector.

“Health is a such a multi-sectoral issue,” Lamb, who is Métis and born and raised in P.A., said. “And we often find that health care is kind of the last place that patients go when they are dealing with disparities that are associated with health inequality. And I think working with programs that are going to help with housing and food security, cultural competencies and ceremony and stuff, there’s so much more that we can be doing to address patients’ health needs.”

It’s that holistic and preventative view of health that she brings to Lamb and Sage Personalized Health Solutions, the consulting-based business which she owns and operates in addition to working at The Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy in South Hill.

“I really believe that health is an entirely personal experience, and that the interactions that you have with your environment, the stresses in your environment, the foods in your environment, your ability to even feel purpose or live a value-based life impacts your ability to get well,” Lamb explained.

Lamb specializes in compound pharmacy. (Submitted photo/University of Saskatchewan)

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While the response of the healthcare system has traditionally been to determine that someone meets diagnostic criteria and then dispense the associated medicine, Lamb tries to take a step back and look at what led to the problem in the first place, she explained.

Lamb recognizes the area of optimal and preventative healthcare she specializes in “currently is only available to those with privilege.”

“I will spend the rest of my life dedicated to changing that,” she said in her acceptance speech.

Along with increasing access to information people can use to improve their well-being, Lamb wants to see better access to the foundational things people need to be healthy, like housing and nutritious food.

“We [in Prince Albert] are a primarily Indigenous community where there is layers and layers of generational traumas and complex traumas that, without adequate mental health support, without the ability to live in a confident and stress-free lifestyle, it’s almost impossible not to see the degree disease progression in mental health and addictions, even heart attacks and other metabolic conditions, because patients don’t have access to a secure lifestyle. They don’t have culturally competent healthcare system that makes them feel safe when they interact with it,” she said.

With her many projects on the go at once, that’s something Lamb is also looking to address in her work as a pharmacist. She explained she’s working with a province-wide group of who are looking to spend more time with patients, getting to know them and ensuring their basic needs are met, along with filling their prescriptions.

“It’s been evidenced in literature that the interaction with a clinician and a patient actually has a health benefit,” she said. “So if you can show that you actually want to get that person better, spend some time with them, learn and understand them, then you can make more culturally competent and trauma-informed care decisions, and, ultimately, that person isn’t being re-traumatized by seeking out health care, and they’re being empowered by the relationships that were formed… I think that’s just as crucial, if not more important than any of the medication that we’ll be dispensing.”

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alison.sandstrom@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @alisandstrom