PharmD students awarded second place at national competition by GoodRx

The GoodRx Building Health Equity competition, a program supported by GoodRx Helps, challenged pharmacy students from across the country to demonstrate their creativity, problem-solving skills and passion for innovation and patient care. Participants were prompted to think about health disparities they have observed in their community, then create a product or tool to address it in a community pharmacy.

Elaine Marji, PharmD’24, Livia Chase, PharmD’24, and Ridhi Sharma, PharmD’24, UB SPPS students and Student National Pharmaceutical Association (SNPhA) members, teamed up to take on the challenge. The health disparity they identified in the Buffalo community was low health literacy specifically affecting the immigrant and refugee populations. Their idea to address this disparity was to develop a new feature in the existing GoodRx app that would have recorded videos and animations available in multiple languages so patients could view how to identify, use and store various prescription medications. They believed this new feature would help counsel patients about their prescription medication questions and could serve to dramatically reduce the health illiteracy and health disparities facing incoming refugees and other patients with low health literacy.

“I have always been very driven to help alleviate and address health disparities within my community as someone who has faced these disparities firsthand,” says Sharma. “Being able to pitch a product that can help address patient needs and improve patient care is just one step in the right direction of helping my community.”

The team submitted a 15-minute video pitching their idea and were selected as finalists in the competition. Over the summer, the team traveled to GoodRx headquarters in Santa Monica, CA to present and then to Atlanta, GA to attend the SNPhA National Convention where they were awarded second place in the competition. Each team member received a $750 award, a GoodRx coaching session and session with product and engineering and a GoodRx “swag bag.”

“This was one of the most exciting things I've done in my professional career, and just to be recognized by GoodRx as a finalist was almost surreal,” says Marji. “To me, winning second place means that our ideas and efforts didn't go unnoticed, and it inspired me to keep advocating for my patients and addressing health disparities.” 

“It [was] very heartening to see a big company like GoodRx caring about our ideas and wanting to implement a pitch that could reduce health disparities that we see in our own community,” says Chase. “I hope to continue to help my community as a future pharmacist and decrease health disparities.” 

GoodRx believes everyone deserves affordable and convenient health care and their mission is to build better ways for people to find the right care at the best price.