Medicine maker: an outreach activity for pharmaceutical manufacturing and health literacy

Public engagement in medicine has become more important in promoting population health management and literacy. Medicine is a topic of great societal importance, and many public engagement activities have been developed to promote this area. However, they often narrowly focus on patient groups, diseases, a singular pharmaceutical drug or analytical technique. Despite the importance of these activities, general audiences are still heavily reliant on doctors and pharmacists for information about their medicine and lack basic knowledge around medication use and personal safety. Given this, a broader engagement approach is warranted to target health literacy among the wider public. “Medicine Maker” is a hands-on public engagement workshop that provides audiences with the opportunity to “manufacture” and inspect the quality of proxy or “dummy” medicine through guided inquiry. Here, we detail the development of the Medicine Maker workshop from its origins in the teaching of Irish third-level pharmacy students, to its initial application with a variety of lay audiences. Formal and informal feedback from participants indicates that the workshop can help foster a more critical understanding of medicine manufacturing, quality control, and personal health.