Healthcare 2021, 9, 1409. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9111409 www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare Article A New Tool for an Awareness Plan Concerning Critical Issues, Needs and Attitudes of Citizens on the Use of Medicines Barbara Pittau *, Piergiorgio Palla, Francesca Pettinau and Antonio Mastino * Institute of Translational Pharmacology, National Research Council, 00133 Rome, Italy; palla.pg@gmail.com (P.P.); f.pettinau@tiscali.it (F.P.) * Correspondence: barbara.pittau@ift.cnr.it (B.P.); A.M., antonio.mastino@ift.cnr.it (A.M.) Abstract: This article describes a pilot study to test the adequacy of a newly developed tool for an awareness plan on the importance of properly using pharmaceuticals. The new tool consists of face‐to‐face interviews with adult citizens on their approach to the use of medicines and of the following data analysis with a dedicated software application. The pilot study was carried out in a sample area of Sardinia, in Italy. The data from the interviews collected anonymously and analysed in aggregate actually emphasised the critical issues and needs in the use of pharmaceuticals in the sample area involved, also encouraging communication among different actors. The pilot study revealed that the designed tool could represent a novel strategy to stimulate interchanges of information on the proper use of pharmaceuticals with a potential impact on people’s health. Keywords: medicines; communication; citizens; attitudes; software application; awareness plan 1. Introduction The importance of health information and related instruments aimed to positively influence change in people’s behaviour, such as information campaigns, intervention planning and intervention evaluation, have been considered as relevant factors for health promotion [1–4]. In particular, encouraging communication concerning the importance of the appropriate use of pharmaceuticals among the interested parties, such as citizens, pharmacists, sanitary staff or scientists, should have important implications for indi‐ vidual health and healthcare system’s sustainability. In fact, the importance of actions capable of increasing the awareness of the potential risks in the use of drugs, which must be balanced with respect to the benefits, has been highlighted by international and na‐ tional regulatory agencies as well as by the scientific community [1,5–9]. Moreover, the same and other reports stressed the centrality of citizens who can provide valuable in‐ formation on the safety of drugs and the relevance of collaboration between patients and healthcare professionals, also pointing out the potential positive impact on pharma‐ covigilance [10,11]. Indeed, despite their potential impact on public health, critical issues concerning household use of medicines have not been systematically investigated [12,13]. In this scenario, the understanding of the context has been shown to be essential for an initiative aimed to ameliorate the proper use of pharmaceuticals to get a chance to be ef‐ fective [4,14–17]. The applied approaches to this issue have been generally focused on information campaign/educational intervention or on software application/informatics products to support people’s health. Our intent was to merge these aims in a single goal. Based on the considerations reported above, an oral interview‐based awareness plan directed at adult citizens (≥ 18 years) on the importance of using pharmaceuticals taking into consideration the risks and benefits of properly following the indications by healthcare professionals was designed. To preliminarily investigate the efficiency and the benefits of the plan and to test a specific informatics tool, the pilot study reported here Citation: Pittau, B.; Palla, P.; Pettinau, F.; Mastino, A. A New Tool for an Awareness Plan Concerning Critical Issues, Needs and Attitudes of Citizens on the Use of Medicines. Healthcare 2021, 9, 1409. https://doi.org/10.3390/ healthcare9111409 Academic Editors: Sara Garfield and Gaby Judah Received: 26 July 2021 Accepted: 15 October 2021 Published: 20 October 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses /by/4.0/).