071 Gareth Evans: The importance and value of developing enhanced services in community pharmacies to improve patient health

On this week's episode, I am excited to launch Part II of the sleep series and introduce Gareth Evans to the podcast. Gareth is a dedicated and passionate pharmacist who genuinely values helping his community through accessible enhanced services that aim to improve patient health. He graduated from the University of Bradford in 1998. He completed the 5-year MPharm Course which still exists today. This course enables you to undertake your pre-registration training as part of the programme where students leave university as a qualified pharmacist pending successful completion of the GPhC registration exam.

Gareth owned his first community pharmacy in 2002, less than 5 years after qualifying as a pharmacist. He set up a consultation room and initiated blood glucose testing and blood pressure monitoring which was relatively new at the time. Weight loss and weight management became part of the services Gareth provided and this was the start of his passion to combat the obesity epidemic. This passion inspired him to set up his own organisation called Waistaway. Waistaway is a complete weight loss and weight management programme that aims to help combat the obesity crisis by combining high quality products and professional, one to one support. They offer a range of weight loss and weight management solutions designed around the individual's requirements. From basic weight check and advice, portion control, partial food replacement, all the way up to total food replacement using the Lipotrim pharmacy programme. Gareth has provided this service for over 16 years and has collected data for over 1800 patients which is a phenomenal achievement! He has successfully published the data and results which is linked below.

Adrian Zacher (see podcast episode 70) contacted Gareth via LinkedIn and sparked his interest in improving sleep disorder services within community pharmacies and supporting pharmacists to be better educated to help their own communities. Through this connection and his curiosity to enhance what services can be provided by community pharmacists, Gareth got involved with setting up the British Society of Pharmacy Sleep Services (BSPSS) and became President of the charity.

Social Media:

Linkedin: @Gareth Evans

Linkedin: @BSPSS

Linkedin: @Waistaway

Twitter: @BritishSleep

Facebook: @BritishSleep

BSPSS website

Waistaway website

Publication - Long Term Evaluation of a UK Community Pharmacy-based Weight Management Service

Follow me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast on your favourite podcast platform so you can be notified when a new episode is released or leave a review on apple podcasts. If you have any suggestions for guests you want me to talk to or if you’d like to come on yourself, please feel free to contact me via social media, or email at [email protected].