Public Health Interview with Chan Park, RPh, PhD

By Mirko Sikirica

Chan Park, born and raised in South Korea, came to the United States just after he graduated from pharmacy school. Already a licensed pharmacist in South Korea, he also became a licensed pharmacist in the state of New York, and eventually moved to Maryland to work in the Veterans Affairs (VA) health system. At the VA he was involved with the clinical trials of the pharmacological effects of substances of abuse, such as cocaine and heroin, for 5 of his 11 years there. In 1996 he came to the FDA’s office of generic drugs as a labeling reviewer. He is also an active and well-respected member in the Korean church community.

Chan was working at the FDA, when the Korean Pharmacists Association in the Greater Washington Area asked him to make a presentation about cocaine abuse. He accepted, and in fact gave two separate presentations, both of them in Korean. The first one was in May of 1999, and the second in September of that same year.

The size of the audience was about 40-50 people and each of the presentations lasted about one hour. Chan gave a short introduction about cocaine, how it is extracted, refined and its mechanism of action. However, his main emphasis was on the types of clues parents can look for in their children that are indicative of cocaine abuse. Since the topic was geared more toward an adult understanding of cocaine abuse, the audience was mostly parents and other adults from the Korean community. Chan showed pictures of the various devices involved in cocaine use so that concerned parents could easily recognize them. He also emphasized the role of the parent in preventing the engagement of children in substance abuse. During the presentation the main parental concerns were with the types of behavior that a child had, and whether to suspect anything. He gave the audience all the necessary contact and public resource information, such as toll-free numbers, web sites and his personal contact information.

After the presentation he did not get as much feedback as he hoped he would, but he feels that the talk went extremely well. He mentions that it was important to alert his community about some of the dangers that can plague it. There was, however, one call that he received a couple of months later from a concerned parent who asked about information on the facilities his son can be referred to. They arranged a meeting, but they never actually met, and he never heard from this family again.

Reflecting on the community service opportunity, Chan urges other health practitioners, pharmacists in particular, to follow his lead for this kind of involvement. He has asserted that this kind of involvement can only impact the community for the better. Even if we can help out just one person using our expertise, he says it is well worth doing.