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As NHS England prepares to relaunch its Pharmacy First public-facing campaign on Monday, 11 November, Community Pharmacy England (CPE) has highlighted the need for a sustained, large-scale effort to maximize the service's impact. Minor updates have been made to the original campaign materials from earlier this year, including additional information on the age criteria for the clinical pathways. Community pharmacies are informed that campaign materials are available on the Department of Health and Social Care's Campaign Resource Centre website. These include a campaign toolkit, social media assets, and posters. These materials can be used ahead of the official launch date. CPE chief executive Janet Morrison said: "It's good that we are finally seeing the resumption of the NHS Pharmacy First marketing campaign, alongside new resources to help with promotion, as we head into winter.

Pharmacies are valuable healthcare assets, meeting increasing public demand. However, a substantial portion of their capacity is consumed by unfunded work. According to Community Pharmacy England's (CPE) 2024 Pharmacy Advice Audit, community pharmacies conduct over 1.3 million unfunded consultations each week, equating to 69 million annually. The average pharmacy completes around 22 of these consultations daily, each taking approximately 5.6 minutes of staff time -adding up to over two hours daily. This represents nearly 50 per cent more consultations than in 2020 and a 78 per cent increase in time spent on unfunded healthcare advice since the 2020 audit. The audit, which surveyed over a third (3,916) of community pharmacies in England earlier this year, also highlights that pharmacies handle nearly 150,000 informal referrals from GPs and NHS 111 each week. All these referrals could have been routed through the Pharmacy First service, which would have potentially secured over £115 million in funding for the sector, the CPE noted.