The Power of Good Neighbor Pharmacy
Providing Free Vitamins to Keep Your Patients Healthy Through the Pandemic and Flu Season
As the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic collides with 2020 flu season, there couldn’t be a more important time to invest in your patients’ health than right now. One way Good Neighbor Pharmacy is helping you and your peers do that is with our Free Vitamin Program, which enables you to offer patients of all ages a free, 30-day supply of vitamins each month to improve their overall health.
We expanded this program earlier this year to give you a substantial discount on four of our most popular private-label vitamins and supply you with a variety of marketing materials to promote this special offering to patients, prescribers, schools, assisted living facilities, etc. Some of the helpful tools you’ll find on Brand Central Station include outreach letters, flyers, bag stuffers, an enrollment form and much more to help you spread the word about your participation in this vital program and engage your patients.
The role of vitamins in immune support
Getting proper nutrition solely from the food you eat is difficult under normal circumstances. It’s especially complicated during a pandemic. Our daily routines have been completely upended and eating healthy often takes a backseat when juggling work-from-home responsibilities with childcare and other complicating factors. Even more troubling is the fact that there are millions of people who are recently out of work and now facing food insecurity as a result.
A lot of people who make a good attempt to have a healthy diet can have some gaps. And for those who don't have a deficiency, a standard, inexpensive multivitamin-multimineral can act as a nutritional safety net.
Walter Willett, M.D., Professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Doctors Kathleen Fairfield and Robert Fletcher of Harvard University mirrored this assessment in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association guidelines. "Most people do not consume an optimal amount of all vitamins by diet alone. Sub-optimal intake of some vitamins, above levels causing classic vitamin deficiency, is a risk factor for chronic diseases and common in the general population, especially the elderly."
The bottom line here is that I don't think anybody should be walking around with low levels or low intakes of important and essential micronutrients and minerals and vitamins at any time, but especially if they're potentially going to be infected with coronavirus. It's just basically practicing good preventive nutrition to begin with.
Walter Willett, M.D., Professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Using vitamins to improve overall wellness
On average, Good Neighbor Pharmacy members that participate in our Free Vitamin Program get more than twice as many vitamins out to their patients per year than members that don’t participate in the program. It’s a powerful way help the people in your community get the nutrition they need and keep them actively engaged in their wellbeing.
Furthermore, the benefits of this program extend well beyond supplements. Patients who pick up their free vitamins on a monthly basis tend to purchase more OTC products. In fact, Good Neighbor Pharmacy members that participate in the Free Vitamin Program see a 150% increase in the number of OTC items they move per year, showing the true value of earning that repeat business through the offering of free vitamins to their community.
