Clean Out With Purpose

raditionally, medication cleanout events happen twice a year to coincide with the fall and spring semesters within health-related institutions. In some ways, the event has become a predictable, regular and welcome reunion of a community of involved and passionate volunteers from TTUHSC and beyond.

Thankfully, the event that started as a somewhat novel approach to the growing problem of proper and responsible disposal of medication is now but one option for many, with a growing number of pharmacies and other permanent collection sites available across the nation.

“There are more drop boxes popping up at pharmacies, which we love,” Ronica Farrar, a specialist in community outreach for the Texas Panhandle Poison Center (TPPC), said. The goal of the Medication Cleanout project is and always has been to prevent poisonings, misuse and abuse while protecting the environment. “That’s our mission, and if there are other avenues to help meet that goal to reach people and get rid of those medications, then we’re all for it.”

While increased access to alternative disposal means within the community is welcome, the program will continue as long as events remain impactful, which organizers believe it has been for the last 15 years. “We’re looking forward to the day that this is available at the pharmacies and that would make it more convenient for the public,” she said.

“We still have hundreds of cars come through at every single event, so as long as we have that kind of turnout, I think we will continue to have events,” Farrar concluded.

Medication cleanout programs were in their infancy nationwide in the early 2000s — and all but unheard of in West Texas at that time. In 2009, Jeanie Shawhart, PharmD, (Pharmacy ’01) assistant professor of pharmacy practice and managing director of the TPPC, teamed up with Farrar and Robbi Rivers, now unit coordinator for the poison control center, to sketch out what a potential program might look like.

“When I started, we were trying to figure out (different) ways that we could reduce the risk of poisonings,” Shawhart said. “I realized that we had a lot of poisoning cases (locally) that resulted from people accessing the medicine cabinet or medications just being left out around the home and being accessed by kids or toddlers.”

“We didn’t know what to expect that first year,” Farrar said. “But the response was tremendous. We were still at it after midnight, properly handling the medications that came in.”

“We learned a lot, and it was very well received by the community right from the starting block,” she added.

While the response to the program was perhaps greater than anticipated, the immediate and significant turnout of that first event showed the team was providing a critical service to the Amarillo and eventually Abilene and Lubbock communities.

A 2020 survey from Stericycle, an organization that offers drug disposal tools and education, found more than one-third of patients hold on to leftover medications for possible future use. Nearly half of those surveyed said they have at least three unused prescription drugs in their medicine cabinets.

The Medication Cleanout team has recognized the focus of the program has shifted with the times. Initially, mitigating poisoning risk was a critical aim and remains so today. However, with the growing threat of the opioid crisis looming large, the risk of easy access to potentially addictive painkillers and/or drugs that could be lethal in high doses steadily became an increasing concern, as well.

“For a while, we really focused on removing narcotics from the home, but more recently the opioid epidemic has shifted to mostly illicit drugs like fentanyl and such,” Shawhart said. “With major depressive disorder and suicide on the rise, getting those substances out of the home is more important now than ever.”