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Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Pharmacy (SIUE SOP) students won a most humorous video award for the second straight year at the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) 2017 Annual Meeting and Exposition held late March in San Francisco. 

Scott Sexton, a fourth year from Waterloo, and Austin Lee, a third year from Festus, Mo., created a video, Batman the Pharmacist Part 2, for the annual national Pharmflix contest conducted by the APhA Academy of Student Pharmacists (APhA-ASP). Sexton and Lee also credited Ray Jhala, an SIUE SOP alumnus, for his contributions during the writing, filming and editing of the video.

The competition is based on a presidential theme, which this year was “Together We Can.” Awards are distributed in three categories: Most Humorous, Most Inspirational and Overall Best Picture.

“For this year’s video, we wanted to build off the platform we developed last year with our Batman the Pharmacist video and showcase a unique, fun way that pharmacists make a difference in the lives of patients,” Lee said. “Our goal was to have fun and showcase the student potential that SIUE SOP has to offer to our professional community.” 

PharmFlix is short film platform that has proven to be popular and creative advocacy for the profession. The films play online throughout the year. The student pharmacists’ efforts at relating the professional knowledge, compassion and vision of the pharmacist, whether in the setting of patient care projects, grassroots advocacy or the workplace, are targeted at enhancing the perception of the pharmacist’s role in patient care.

The PharmFlix Video Contest was launched in 2009 as a way for student pharmacists to showcase their professionalism while also expressing their creativity by creating short public service announcements (PSA). PSAs have been created in various styles, including documentaries, parodies of pop-culture, commercials, music videos and movie trailers. Chapters are encouraged to work with their school or college of pharmacy, ASP members and the public to create their videos.

Photo:  SIUE School of Pharmacy students Scott Sexton (left) and Austin Lee.