Academic Pharmacy Now: 2023 Issue 1

The

News Magazine of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy

Academic Pharmacy NOW

Pharmacists Help People Live Healthier, Better Lives.

1400 Crystal Drive, Suite 300 P Arlington, VA 22202 703-739-2330 P www.aacp.org

Founded in 1900, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy is the national organization representing the interests of pharmacy education. AACP comprises all accredited colleges and schools of pharmacy, including more than 6,600 faculty, approximately 63,800 students enrolled in professional programs and 4,800 individuals pursuing graduate study.

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About Academic Pharmacy Now

Academic Pharmacy Now highlights the work of AACP member pharmacy schools and faculty. The magazine is published as a membership service.

Change of Address

For address changes, contact LaToya Casteel, Member Services Manager, at lcasteel@aacp.org.

©2023 by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. All rights reserved. Content may not be reprinted without prior written permission.

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CEO & Publisher

Lee Vermeulen

Editorial Advisor

Lynette R. Bradley-Baker

Editorial Director

Maureen Thielemans

Managing Editor

Jane E. Rooney

Editorial Assistant

Kyle R. Bagin

Art Director

Tricia Gordon

Freelance Writer

Joseph Cantlupe

Freelance Writer

Emily Jacobs

Freelance Writer

Athena Ponushis

Hispanic Representation Reaches New Heights

As the nation’s first Hispanic Center of Excellence in Pharmacy, the Loma Linda University School of Pharmacy is one of several institutions working to diversify recruitment to support this underrepresented population and improve health outcomes for vulnerable communities.

community impact

UF Model Investigates How Drug Interactions Lead to Contraceptive Failure

A computer model developed by University of Florida College of Pharmacy researchers will help determine which drug combinations might increase the likelihood of unintended pregnancies.

A Rising Research Star

Inmaculada Hernandez, the 2022 National Academy of Medicine Fellow in Pharmacy, shares her thoughts on how to use data to get additional support for pharmacy-provided services and advance the profession.

Are Grades Failing Students?

More pharmacy schools are considering pass/fail grading systems, hoping to return to the original intention of letter grades: motivation.

Raising Awareness to End an Epidemic

Opioid use and the spread of illicit fentanyl continue to pose a risk to public health. Pharmacy schools are working to educate students and the public about substance use disorder, reduce stigma and encourage communities to embrace harmreduction strategies.

Experience Fresh Ideas and New Solutions at INnovate 2023

February 18-21, 2023

• Orlando, Fla.

Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld

Colleagues,

It is my pleasure to introduce this issue of Academic Pharmacy Now. During the past several months as the new CEO of AACP, I have had the opportunity to meet many of you, and I remain amazed at the level of enthusiasm and passion all our members bring to the work of the Association. Despite being swamped with responsibilities of your “day jobs,” our members are, without fail, willing to volunteer for projects, committees, and other activities that benefit the entire pharmacy Academy. Without that level of volunteerism, we could not accomplish nearly as much as we do. I’m now preparing to attend my first AACP Interim Meeting, and I look forward to seeing many of you in Orlando!

This issue of APN contains several important articles that I’d like to draw your attention to. The continued work of our colleges and schools of pharmacy on combatting the opioid epidemic is to be commended. Our feature article discusses efforts from several colleges and schools in working within their communities on this important public health focus. Diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism is not only one of our Association’s strategic priorities, but a focus for all our members. Our colleagues at the Loma Linda University School of Pharmacy describe their development of the nation’s first Hispanic Center of Excellence in Pharmacy as a critical example of advancing the DEIA goals we all share.

Many of our colleges and schools of pharmacy are considering new methods in teaching and assessment. An article from two of our institutional members at the University at Buffalo and the Medical College of Wisconsin provides insight and considerations around pass/ fail grading systems that they argue foster collaboration amongst students, and (of critical importance) reduce stress and improve the mental well-being of their learners.

Finally, you will have the opportunity to learn about and from a conversation with the 20222024 National Academy of Medicine Fellow in Pharmacy, Dr. Inmaculada Hernandez. Inma, our sixth NAM Pharmacy Fellow, discusses how the program is contributing to her research, and is expanding her development as a scholar and educator. The NAM Pharmacy program— co-sponsored by AACP and the American College of Clinical Pharmacy—is an incredible program that, unfortunately, few of our members are aware of. At the upcoming AACP Annual Meeting in Denver, we will be hosting a session bringing together our current and past fellows to share more information about the program and the impact it has had on their professional lives and the Academy.

I look forward to seeing many of you at our upcoming meetings throughout the year. Please do not ever hesitate to contact me with any questions, ideas, or perspectives!

Sincerely,

Lee Vermeulen, B.S.Pharm., M.S., FCCP, FFIP CEO and Publisher

Hispanic Representation Reaches New Heights

As the nation’s first Hispanic Center of Excellence in Pharmacy, the Loma Linda University School of Pharmacy is one of several institutions working to diversify recruitment to support this underrepresented population and improve health outcomes for vulnerable communities.

By Joseph A. Cantlupe

When Dr. Willie Davis, Jr., the associate dean of student services at the Loma Linda University School of Pharmacy, gets word that some students received long-awaited financial support to help them continue their studies, he’s overjoyed. “When that happens, it’s the best feeling; those are the best days that I have working here,” Davis said.

In San Bernardino County, Calif., where the university is located, 60 percent of the population is Hispanic and Latinx. With that population, as Dean Dr. Michael Hogue noted, pharmacists are in a special position to serve the community. “A shared cultural understanding allows pharmacists to break communication barriers and provide medical interventions relevant to the patient,” Hogue said.

Davis anticipates seeing more success for the school’s Hispanic/Latinx student pharmacists now that the opportunity to serve this population has been given a big boost: The school received a $3.46 million federal grant to establish the nation’s first Hispanic Center of Excellence in Pharmacy from the Health Resources and Services Administration to finance initiatives for medically vulnerable populations. As a Center of Excellence, university officials said they will improve educational and training opportunities for the Hispanic/Latinx community, increase the number of Hispanic pharmacists in the area and establish efforts to address health issues among residents of the area known as the Inland Empire.

Davis, the center’s program director, also expects to see many more letters of financial support for students and an increased opportunity to develop educational programs for recruiting students and faculty. The grant will provide scholarship support of nearly $1 million over five years; $15,000 yearly stipends for 65 students “to help make a dent into the debt load,” he said. The ultimate goal is to improve health outcomes for underserved members of the community. “Growing up in Atlanta, we were poor and didn’t have the greatest healthcare. My educational opportunities wouldn’t have been there if I didn’t have the financial resources. I understand what the students are going through, and I understand what it is like being in an underserved area.”

Referring to members of the community, he observed that they are “a critical part of us. That is a deeply spiritual part of the DNA here.” Although only one school of pharmacy had previously received a Center of Excellence grant, Loma Linda University supported School of Pharmacy officials when they said they would seek the funding. “We looked at the state of California and saw that only 5.8 percent of pharmacy students are Hispanic/Latinx,” Hogue said. “Yet here in Loma Linda, our enrollment is three times higher than that. So we felt as an institution that the School of Pharmacy should go after this Center of Excellence designation.”

The argument worked. Hogue said he is excited about receiving the award but also recognizes the challenge. The center will be part of a significant team, Hogue said, including a collaboration with the university’s School of Behavioral Health and community partnerships that involve the Inland Empire Health Plan, SAC Health, El Sol Neighborhood Educational Center and the San Bernadino City Unified School District. Those collaborations will be directed at training Hispanic and other underrepresented minority student pharmacists in areas that can only enhance their professional capacity, by evaluating such issues as social determinants of health and behavioral health. Students also will be trained in community pharmacies. Despite the number of Hispanic students they serve, school officials concede that there are obstacles ahead. For instance, the number of Hispanic/Latinx faculty members is lacking.

He noted that there are only two Hispanic faculty members. “The demand for Spanish-speaking individuals has grown dramatically. There is a huge gap in our faculty. This is the right thing to do. We want to intentionally grow that.”

“We wanted a proactive approach to address these issues. We recognized the need to grow at the time we applied for the grant and the need to expand our faculty ranks.”

—Dr. Michael Hogue

Added Davis: “We can’t expect to encourage Spanish-speaking students to move into academic pharmacy if we don’t address that issue.” A fellowship program connected to the grant is unique because it includes behavioral programs as part of training for faculty and students.

Beyond Hispanic Heritage Month

With an increasing Hispanic/Latinx population across the country, universities and colleges of pharmacy are initiating targeted programs to increase their student base and faculty, keenly aware that they must make significant strides to meet the needs of patients in their communities. As a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), Loma Linda University is also among the colleges designated through grants to strengthen their efforts to recruit and support underrepresented students, grow a more diversified faculty and serve communities as a comprehensive healthcare institution.

To receive HSI status, the U.S. Department of Education requires a Hispanic/Latinx undergraduate student population of at least 25 percent at the end of the award year immediately preceding the date of application. HSI was established under Titles III and V of the Higher Education Act of 1965 to improve higher education accessibility for Hispanics and make available grant funding through various federal agencies. The grants also enable HSIs to expand and enhance their academic offerings, program quality and institutional stability. About 569 institutions across the country have HSI status, which also makes available dedicated U.S. Department of Education Hispanic-Serving Institutions Grant Programs.

The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, which includes the Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy, was formally recognized in February as a

Hispanic-Serving Institution. The institution is only the third health sciences center in Texas to receive HSI status. In a statement, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center President Dr. Lori Rice-Spearman said the HSI status serves as a building block to train healthcare professionals to serve a more diverse population. Hispanic students are the secondlargest ethnic group in higher education and HSIs educate 66.8 percent of all Hispanic students in the country. When applying for HSI designation, the university reported 27 percent of Hispanic undergraduate students in the fall of 2019.

“This recognition as a Hispanic-Serving Institution supports our vision to transform healthcare through innovation and collaboration,” RiceSpearman added. “It provides opportunities to work collaboratively not only within our institution but also with external community partners in all areas of academic medicine. As a result, we anticipate leading efforts where innovative contributions allow us to better serve all populations, establishing a culture that will serve as a model for others.”

School officials are proud of the designation but point to an already long history of serving Hispanic students, said Jody C. Randall, vice president of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI). After the center received the HSI designation, Randall said university officials “began to explore what it means for us” and ultimately decided that it reflected “strengthening this community and identifying all populations, beginning with the creation and development of initiatives serving Hispanic populations. With this, we can then better serve all marginalized communities. We have many opportunities ahead and work to do.”

Randall said the school recruits students who are often from rural areas and want to serve West Texas communities with significant healthcare needs. While an estimated 138 U.S. counties are considered “pharmacy deserts,” Randall said, 22 are in Texas, with 20 being in the institution’s service area. At the same time, the pharmacy school has adopted a strategic plan to reflect improved curriculum and recruitment goals. Currently, Hispanic student enrollment in the pharmacy school is around 11 percent, while Hispanics comprise about 6 percent of the faculty; both areas “have opportunities for growth. Thoughtful planning like what the school has done will help us in closing this disparity.”

“Considering the demographics of Texas as a state institution, we want to make sure we contribute to the population of researchers, academics and pharmacists that are representative of the state we serve.”

—Cristina Tejeda

Like many schools, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month last fall. The celebrations are important, but Randall acknowledged that the school must dig deeper not only for the month, but the days, months and years ahead. “We jump on those celebrations too. When you are looking at a heritage or cultural celebrations, it brings an emphasis to a people or a community for some time,” she said, “but the work continues. Some people don’t see beyond that. We do at our institution.”

She said the HSI designation will help the university leverage resources on a national level to support things such as curriculum development, outreach programs and research opportunities for students, faculty, staff and patients. “In healthcare education, there are pretty obvious health disparities, and there is a need to transform healthcare. We are doing just that through intentional efforts and our commitment to advance diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Diversifying the Pharmacy Pipeline

In 2020, the University of Texas at Austin received the Hispanic-Serving Institution designation, and then joined the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities in 2022. Last year, the university’s College of Pharmacy was the winner of a Health Professions Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award. The college has designed programs “to strengthen the pipeline of pharmacists with diverse backgrounds,” said Cristina Tejeda, senior diversity & inclusion coordinator. Her responsibilities include assisting with planning and implementing the college’s diversity, equity, accessibility and inclusion initiatives for faculty, students and staff. “Considering the demographics of Texas as a state institution, we want to make sure we contribute to the population of researchers, academics and pharmacists that are representative of the state we serve.” Among the university’s programs:

ɋ Its Building Our Own Talent (BOOT) program is designed to increase the recruitment, retention and preparation of trainees from diverse backgrounds (taking into account race, ethnicity, national origin, gender and gender identity, sexuality, socioeconomic class and religion) for an academic career in pharmaceutical sciences.

ɋ Its Leadership through Engagement for the Advancement of Diverse Educational Research (LEADER) program is a nine-week summer research experience for rising junior or senior undergraduate students from Texas’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions. The program provides an opportunity for students to receive on-site “high-quality, hands-on research experiences and mentoring to increase student applications from Texas HBCUs and HSIs into the graduate programs associated with the College of Pharmacy,” Tejeda said. “Participating faculty mentors come from several of the college’s divisions and have demonstrated experience training and mentoring undergraduate students.” Students receive a stipend and housing, meals and parking at no cost.

ɋ A three-day Project Engage Pharmacy Program (PEPP) is geared toward underrepresented minority and first-generation student applicants from minority-serving institutions who are interested in health professions or biomedical sciences. Students are exposed to the diverse field of pharmacy by engaging in visits to different types of pharmacy practice environments.

ɋ Provost’s Early Career Fellows. The idea is to increase the number of faculty who will further UT Austin’s goals of diversity, equity and inclusiveness by attracting and hiring candidates with outstanding scholarly records, as well as knowledge and experience in the issues and practices of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Last summer, the school supported 15 participants through the PEPP, LEADER and BOOT programs. In the strategic plan, the DEI efforts “are clearly outlined and are at the core of the work and interactions carried out,” Tejeda said. The efforts are “woven throughout the college’s curriculum and community. An aspect of the program that has been most impactful is built-in mentorship opportunities. With Texas as well as other states in the nation facing increased healthcare needs, it helps to understand the healthcare landscape from professionals in the field now who can provide keen insight to our students.” ɋ

Joseph A. Cantlupe is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.

Are Grades Failing Students?

More pharmacy schools are considering pass/fail grading systems, hoping to return to the original intention of letter grades: motivation.

By Athena Ponushis

Shortly after Dr. Gary Pollack arrived at the University at Buffalo School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and assumed his position as dean, he began discussions with the faculty about how to nurture student success through a new grading system that would emphasize learning concepts over the attainment of letter grades. He was interested in systems that would support students rather than label them. Over the course of the 2022 spring semester, he and his team strategized and met with faculty members to share thoughts and ideas. After a three-day curricular retreat in early summer 2022, faculty and staff finalized a system design and last fall, he and his team introduced an honors/satisfactory/ unsatisfactory (modified pass/fail) grading system. His hope is to reduce student stress while strengthening intrinsic motivation. “Redirecting students’ primary focus from the grades they earn to what they actually learn is of the utmost importance,” Pollack said.

In his opinion piece for The New York Times, “Pass-Fail Raises the Question: What’s the Point of Grades?” Jack Sneider, professor of education at the University of Massachusetts, quoted American economist and sociologist Thorsten Veblen. More than 100 years ago, Veblen observed that the pursuit of grades “progressively sterilizes all personal initiative and ambition that comes within its sweep.” Today, some professors of pharmacy education continue to see students consumed with earning an ‘A,’ disregarding their innate desire to discover more.

The original intention of letter grades may have been to motivate students, giving them a prized ‘A’ to work toward and claim, but somewhere along the way, the grade eclipsed the learning. Pharmacy schools, like Buffalo, looking to shift the focus away from grades and back to intrinsic learning, are adopting pass/fail grading systems. The vast majority of medical schools (more than 75 percent) use a form of pass/fail grading, compelling more pharmacy schools to contemplate the move as a means to promote student wellbeing, motivation and collaboration, and lower anxiety, stress and competition.

Pollack has been questioning the implications of letter grades for 20 years and said there are four aspects that have guided his thinking. The first, which may be more salient now than ever, is mental health. A traditional letter grading system involves a full complement of pluses and minuses, creating 12 or so grade designations. This places most students within a few points of a grade boundary, which puts them in a state of perpetual stress in every course. “We just don’t need to be piling on additional stress for no learning gain,” Pollack said.

Second, faculty are often troubled that their discussions with students are dominated by concerns about their grades, not content. Students ask faculty if their grades can be changed, “and we incentivize students to do that because they think, ‘If I only get a point here or a point there, I can improve from one letter category to another,’” he added.

Third, letter grades instigate competition. “It’s the perception and sometimes the reality that each grading category has a limited number of slots, so a student sitting in class may glance at the student sitting in the next seat and think, ‘Your failure is my opportunity,’” he pointed out. Meanwhile, student pharmacists are taught that the provision of healthcare is a team sport and that they must collaborate as members of a team, not compete.

Lastly, Pollack said faculty members can use grades as labels. “We often talk to each other about our students like, ‘This is an ‘A’ student,’ or ‘This is a ‘B’ student,’ and that label confers a different level of competence or mastery of the material,” he noted. But when a grade of 90.0 earns a student an A minus and an 89.9 earns another student a B plus, how do you distinguish a meaningful difference in the two students’ capability? “We are not being honest with our students and we are not being honest with the people who evaluate student transcripts by pretending there are meaningful differences in what those two students can do.”

Those four factors drove Pollack to work with the faculty to look for another system. He assembled three teams at the

UB School of Pharmacy to embark on a curricular revision that included faculty, staff, alumni and students. One team was charged with studying evidence-based approaches to teaching and learning to restructure a Pharm.D. curriculum with a clean slate. Dr. William Prescott, department chair, pharmacy practice, led that team and found their mission liberating: “We were able to say, if we could design a curriculum from scratch, this is what we would do.”

The idea for a modified pass/fail approach to grading came from that group. They looked at the literature, examples of medical schools, including UB’s own, as well as other schools of pharmacy. They saw no difference in board pass rates or residency match rates but found better on-time graduation rates. Then they thought about the metrics they cared about. “We want to graduate pharmacists who provide high-quality patient care, engage in research and scholarship and take a leadership role in advancing the practice of pharmacy,” Prescott said. “Letter grades are not always an accurate measure of learning and can be a source of stress for students. We believe a pass/fail system will help us cultivate the pharmacists we want to graduate by fostering intrinsic motivation and shifting students’ focus from the grade they received to, ‘What did I learn, what did I not learn and what content do I need to revisit to better understand the material?’”

UB may have just launched the new grading system for its first year Pharm.D. class—giving honors for an overall score of 90 percent or higher and satisfactory for an overall score of 70 or better—but Prescott has already seen a shift. The school runs exam reviews and students who do not perform well on an assessment are required to attend so they can see the material again and ask instructors questions. “In the past, when I and other faculty have run an exam review the questions tend to be nitpicky about the exam questions themselves, about the validity of the items,” Prescott said. “The exam reviews we held last semester felt different. Questions from students were based on gaining a better understanding of the material, instead of trying to boost their grade.” Anecdotal as it may be, Prescott found it refreshing to hear students ask, ‘Why did I get this wrong?’ versus, ‘Is there any way I can get more points for this question?’

Collaboration, Not Competition

Since its inaugural class in 2017, the Medical College of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy has used a satisfactory/ unsatisfactory assessment across its curricula, but it was during the 2022 October white coat ceremony honoring the Pharm.D. class of 2025 having completed one academic term, when founding dean and professor Dr. George MacKinnon saw its fruition. “Students crossed the stage and stepped up

to the mic to give gratitude to those who helped them get to where they are, and as I stood there and listened to them, it struck me, many of the students were thanking their peers, recognizing each other as their support,” MacKinnon said. He believes the pass/fail curriculum has helped foster such a collaborative spirit and was given further validation recently. MCW School of Pharmacy requires an interprofessional education rotation in its IPPE model that consists of seven required IPPEs (totaling 560 hours), placing student pharmacists with non-pharmacists so they see healthcare from someone else’s lens and identify opportunities for medication-related areas for pharmacists to be involved. MacKinnon recalled two students telling him, ‘I’m not sure I would have been ready for my IPE with my nurse practitioner had I not experienced the way we work as a team here, because I did not have to come in and be all-knowing, but I had to know what role I could contribute to the team.’ MacKinnon trusts his students felt comfortable doing that because of their pass/fail curriculum, and that’s the result he wants to see.

“When they finish their pharmacy program with us, I want my graduates to know what team-based care is, I want them to know their role in team-based care, and maybe even more importantly, I want them to know when they don’t see a team, what to do and how to get a team formed,” MacKinnon said. He also wants to nurture intrinsic learners. After each exam, his students are given a strength and opportunities report, which identifies where they did well or didn’t do well. “Here’s the quandary, and that is even in a letter grade system, if a student gets an 80 percent and that might be a ‘B,’ OK great, but what 20 percent didn’t you know? To me, that’s the philosophical area I really struggle with.” Even in a pass/fail system, the passing level could be 70 percent, but again, what 30 percent did the student not know?

MacKinnon proposed a way for his students to see and understand what they may have missed on the exam: “You

take your exam in the first hour of class. When you are done, you walk to another room, sit down at a table and take the same exam over again, now as a team. The four of you must come up with one answer that you submit for each question,” he explained. “At that point in time, you would be able to identify areas maybe you didn’t know, but now through the team, you identify the correct answer.”

MacKinnon remembers the moment he thought of the idea, before his school even launched its Pharm.D. program. He was walking down the hallway and heard two medical students who had just taken a pharmacology exam. “They were asking, ‘Well, what did you put for that one?’ ‘Here’s what I put, I thought it was this.’ They were teaching each other,” MacKinnon said. “What I wanted to do was capture that conversation from the hallway and put it in the classroom.”

They’re not alone: UB implemented collaborative testing this past fall semester in parallel with its pass/fail system. “This was another recommendation that originated from our curricular revision team. We know peer-to-peer teaching is effective and have been using team-based learning for years, but never applied that concept to higher stakes examinations,” Prescott said. “We’re pilot testing it this year, comparing student performance in the traditional and collaborative testing environments.”

What Does a GPA Mean?

Karen MacKinnon, director of outreach and assistant professor at MCW School of Pharmacy, published an article in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, “Survey of Pass/Fail Grading Systems in US Doctor of Pharmacy Degree Programs,” in June 2021. Along with colleagues she identified 10 Pharm.D. programs using pass/fail grading systems, gathered data from eight and found that the minimum pass level also varied by institution, ranging from 70 percent to 90 percent.

“We want to graduate pharmacists who provide high-quality patient care, engage in research and scholarship and take a leadership role in advancing the practice of pharmacy. Letter grades are not always an accurate measure of learning and can be a source of stress for students.”

—Dr. William Prescott

“In schools of medicine, they have found that going to a pass/ fail grading system has increased well-being, motivation and collaboration among student groups and decreased competition, anxiety and stress,” George MacKinnon said. “Those are the things they have identified, so why wouldn’t we see the same in academic pharmacy?”

The AJPE article generated so much interest that the MCW School of Pharmacy held a pass/fail education forum in January 2022, led by Karen MacKinnon. “We have 142 schools of pharmacy in the Academy and we had 70 schools attend our virtual forum wanting to hear more about pass/fail education,” she said. She and others gave an overview of what medical schools have done, then focused on learning from pharmacy schools that presently have pass/fail educational programs. Attendees were grouped into breakout sessions where they openly discussed four topics: curriculum, assessment, recruitment as well as preceptor and faculty development.

“We asked the groups what should our next steps be, what do you want to focus on, and they said, ‘We want to further investigate the different types of assessments,’” she said. She hosted a follow-up session in April, opening up the conversation to other colleges that wanted to explore questions such as the minimum passing level, grade designations (honors, pass, fail, satisfactory unsatisfactory) and whether to share numerical scores with students and calculate a GPA. Realizing one obstacle was the lack of data pass/fail schools could provide to resident program directors, Karen MacKinnon and her colleagues met with the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) and continue to educate resident program directors on pass/fail systems, asking them to evaluate candidates from a holistic view and making sure they know what a GPA is derived from.

George MacKinnon has seen elements of the Pharm.D. curriculum gravitating to pass/fail grading. “Preceptors don’t like to hear students groveling for extra points to raise their grades,” he said, so some APPEs and IPPEs, mostly

evaluated by outside volunteer preceptors, have already moved to pass/fail scores. Lab skills can also be difficult to assess by letter grades, so the laboratory approach to pass/ fail appears to be on the rise. “What might end up happening,” George MacKinnon clarified, “is that a GPA may only reflect a student’s didactic knowledge and not the full complement of an individual’s skills and abilities in a Pharm.D. program.”

MCW School of Pharmacy has produced three cohorts of graduates, matching or exceeding the national level for NAPLEX and exceeding the national placement rate for residents. The MacKinnons believe the pass/fail system supports the pharmacists they want to graduate. Graduates are comfortable speaking up in teams, advocating for patients, and are intrinsically motivated, lifelong learners, which is what the profession needs. “There are so many drug classes and ways in which we treat patients that have evolved since I graduated from pharmacy school, and I’ve had to learn that on my own,” George MacKinnon noted. “I didn’t get any letter grade at the end of it. As a pharmacist, I just had to know it.”

Back at UB, Pollack and his team are phasing in their modified pass/fail system over four years, collecting data to assess its impact on student stress and academic performance. Faculty will take a look at board pass rates and residency match rates among the students who participated in the pass/ fail grading model and the class before them to ensure that the changes are having the desired impact.

Pollack feels confident in UB’s move. “Academic health professions often look to medicine as the gold standard in a variety of ways and there has to be a reason why the vast majority of medical schools in the United States use a modified pass/fail system for grading,” he said. “It’s a little bit surprising to me that academic pharmacy has not moved in the same direction much earlier than this, so I would suggest that my dean colleagues look to academic medicine and look at what they are doing.”

Athena Ponushis is a freelance writer based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

“In schools of medicine, they have found that going to a pass/fail grading system has increased well-being, motivation and collaboration among student groups and decreased competition, anxiety and stress. Those are the things they have identified, so why wouldn’t we see the same in academic pharmacy?”

—Dr. George MacKinnon

an important role as part of patients’

care

teams policies that can expand on how pharmacists deliver healthcare. We’re transforming our

UF Model Investigates How Drug Interactions Lead to Contraceptive Failure

A computer model developed by University of Florida College of Pharmacy researchers will help determine which drug combinations might increase the likelihood of unintended pregnancies.

By Matthew Splett

More than 900 million women and their partners worldwide use contraceptive products to prevent pregnancies. However, many contraceptive users may not realize taking additional medications can reduce the effectiveness of birth control—leading to unintended pregnancies. In a study published in the journal Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, University of Florida College of Pharmacy researchers describe how they developed a computer model and validated the findings in real-world data to compare hormonal contraceptive drug products when given alone or in combination with other medications. The model will help regulators, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, evaluate the best- and worst-case scenarios when hormonal contraceptives are prescribed with new drug candidates.

“There is an urgent public health need to understand how drug interactions are leading to unplanned pregnancies,” said Dr. Stephan Schmidt, the Certara Endowed Professor in the UF College of Pharmacy and director of the Center for Pharmacometrics and Systems Pharmacology. “We have more than 300 million women worldwide who are susceptible to these drug interactions, and the evidence suggests up to a 50 percent failure rate in low- and middle-income countries.”

Contraceptive failure rates are lower in the United States than in Sub-Saharan Africa and countries where widespread diseases, such as HIV and tuberculosis, require multiple medications. Women taking these drugs are susceptible to unintended pregnancies because HIV and tuberculosis medications induce CYP3A4, an enzyme that helps release the progestins found in hormonal contraceptives into the bloodstream. “It’s the scenario where one drug has the potential to change the speed at which the body gets rid of the other drug,” Schmidt said. “If drug concentration levels drop faster than intended, then birth control medications are at an increased risk of being ineffective at preventing pregnancy.”

UF researchers examined multiple hormonal contraceptives— formulated with different ingredients—to identify the risk

of drug interactions causing unplanned pregnancies. In the best-case scenario, they found oral hormonal contraceptives to be 100 percent effective; however, this efficacy rate can diminish due to various factors without the use of secondary protection.

The upper and lower boundaries were established using a computer-aided modeling approach called pharmacokinetic bracketing. UF researchers developed the model to simulate and evaluate drug interactions that may not be frequently studied in the real world. Using real-world data, the researchers compared the rate of unintended pregnancy among women using different hormonal contraceptives who were exposed to drug interactions.

“Our main goal was to provide a developmental framework for drug regulators and the pharmaceutical industry to use when they evaluate and develop new drug products,” said Dr. Brian Cicali, a research assistant professor of pharmaceutics in the UF College of Pharmacy and the co-lead author of the study along with Dr. Amir Sarayani and Dr. Lais Da Silva. “The thresholds defined for these hormonal contraceptives will help develop novel formulations to improve medication access and use in low- and middle-income countries. The combined computational and pharmacoepidemiological approaches of this multidisciplinary team strengthen the study findings and provide an example for future collaborative research.”

The latest research supports ongoing global drug development and regulatory evaluation efforts led by the departments of pharmaceutics and pharmaceutical outcomes and policy in the UF College of Pharmacy and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. To date, the foundation has awarded $2.5 million to study hormonal contraceptive drug interactions that lead to unintended pregnancies. In addition, Bayer has served as an industry collaborator on the research and guided modeling efforts and clinical pharmacology of their compounds. ɋ

Reprinted with permission from the University of Florida College of Pharmacy.

A Rising Research Star

Inmaculada Hernandez, the 2022 National Academy of Medicine Fellow in Pharmacy, shares her thoughts on how to use data to get additional support for pharmacy-provided services and advance the profession.

By Emily Jacobs

Dr. Inmaculada Hernandez, associate professor of clinical pharmacy at the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California, San Diego, has been selected as the 2022 National Academy of Medicine Fellow in Pharmacy. Hernandez is now the second UCSD faculty member to be selected for this fellowship. The NAM fellowship is supported through an endowment from AACP and the American College of Clinical Pharmacy, as part of the NAM Fellowships for Health Science Scholars program. The program invites early-career academic professionals to participate in studies related to American health, allowing them to contribute to the future of healthcare while furthering their own careers.

Academic Pharmacy Now spoke with Hernandez to find out more about her goals for this two-year fellowship and how she hopes to enrich academic pharmacy.

How did you react when you found out about the fellowship?

I was really excited, because I know a few of the previous fellows and they’ve spoken of what a terrific opportunity it is. I do some work around pharmaceutical policy, and I thought this could be a great avenue to disseminate and expand my work on the area.

What are your primary research interests?

I have three main areas of work. One is using large, existing data sets to understand how drugs work, such as which drugs work better in which populations. That’s often drugs that have already been approved. Then I do some work around drug prices, like drivers of drug prices. Why are drugs so expensive here in the U.S.? And the third one, which is something

that we started recently, is looking at spatial access to healthcare, with a focus on pharmacy access. We’re trying to understand, for instance, are independent pharmacies more important in providing access to care in rural areas than chains? Those sorts of questions.

What will be your research focus within the NAM fellowship?

So the Academy, often commissioned by the government, puts together groups of experts to look at certain aspects of science that the government needs an answer for. The idea is that I would become involved in one or two studies that are related to my expertise. We are still waiting for a match of where my areas of expertise are going to fit the studies that they have.

Do you have any specific goals for the fellowship?

We have demonstrated during Covid that pharmacies are a key part of access to healthcare and that we can help with many services beyond drug dispensing. And this is probably going to be increasingly important as we’re expected to have a shortage of clinicians in the next few decades. I would like to understand what evidence would be important to generate to support policymaking that expands the role of pharmacists in the provision of clinical services.

How is this fellowship important for pharmacy education and the practice of pharmacy?

I think it’s a great opportunity for an academic to be involved in an organization that has a very high impact. The Academy is now doing a

lot of studies around workforce and health workforce, especially given the burnout associated with Covid. As I begin to understand what key data we’re missing to make the case for why pharmacies need to be able to deliver more services, I’m hoping that I can guide my research into [those] areas where we need to show data to advance our profession. There are certainly a lot of areas that we need to work on in pharmacy education. Mental health is probably the most salient area right now. There’s burnout among practicing pharmacists that inevitably is projecting a pessimistic perspective of the profession to our students. I hope that we work toward solutions that can make the healthcare workplace a more welcoming environment.

Do you have any ideas on how to help with that?

It’s been interesting as a faculty member to talk with students’ preceptors and employers. The professionals working in the clinical settings where our students are placed are overworked. I hope that the current

will lead to much needed change. We are actively working with the places where our students work and train clinically to understand what are the barriers they are currently facing and be able to project an enthusiastic perspective of our profession to our students.

How are you working with AACP under this fellowship to advance pharmacy?

I’m an academic and they are the leading organization in pharmacy education, so I would like to join efforts with them and support their current objectives to advance pharmacy education and the profession. We’re going to try to brainstorm how we can use this opportunity that they have gifted us with to try to work on pharmacy education and advancing pharmacy practice.

The pandemic has demonstrated, not only in the U.S., that pharmacists are accessible healthcare providers who are at the forefront of healthcare delivery. The flexibilities associated

Maine Contributes to NAM’s Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being

AACP’s former EVP and CEO Dr. Lucinda Maine participated in the National Academy of Medicine Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being as a member of the steering committee. NAM launched the Collaborative in 2017 to address the alarming rates of burnout across all specialties and care settings in the United States. The Collaborative has three goals:

1) raise the visibility of clinician anxiety, burnout, depression, stress and suicide; 2) improve baseline understanding of challenges to clinician wellbeing; and 3) advance evidencebased, multidisciplinary solutions to improve patient care by caring for the caregiver.

Part of the steering committee’s work involved creating a national strategy to address these issues. The committee participated in six meetings between December 2021 and May 2022 to lead the conceptualization, outlining, drafting and editing of the National Plan for Health Workforce Well-Being, which NAM released in October 2022.

The plan calls on healthcare and public health leaders, government, payers, industry, educators and leaders in other sectors to help drive policy and systems change.

AACP is one of 50 organizations that has endorsed the final publication and is committed to reversing clinician burnout trends.

Dr. Hernandez with Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health and National Human Genome Research Institute; Dr. Adam Bress, 2020 NAM fellow in pharmacy; and others at the 2022 NAM Annual Meeting. (Photo Credit: @ihdezdelso on Twitter.)

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access to important services such as immunizations. Surveys show that 70 percent of adults would like those pandemic flexibilities to stay. It is therefore a crucial time for pharmacists and pharmacy organizations to advocate for those flexibilities to stay beyond the pandemic. We also need to leverage the momentum generated by the crucial role that pharmacy has had in the handling of Covid to advocate for the recognition of provider status and for the development of reimbursement models that ensure the financial sustainability of independent pharmacies.

I have recently asked the leaders of pharmacy organizations to let us know if, as researchers, we can contribute to the development of evidence that they believe will be key to advocating on the Hill for these policies, which are of major relevance for health equity.

Left: With Dr. David Baltimore, 1975 Nobel Laureate in medicine, and “one of the most influential scientists of our time,” says Dr. Hernandez.

Right: Dr. Hernandez with Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical advisor to the President of United States, at the NAM 50th Anniversary Gala. (Photo Credit: @ihdezdelso on Twitter.)

Have you done anything to celebrate getting the fellowship?

I really like my job, so I often do not celebrate professional achievements—I feel what is worth of celebration is the opportunity that I have every day to work in the field, guiding my own research agenda and generating the next generation of pharmacists. I often tell my students that the beauty lies in the path, not the landmark achievements. The constant pursuit of the next objective can leave you unsatisfied when you achieve those goals you set for yourself, because then it is hard to figure out what is the next thing. I think the approach to satisfaction and personal achievement in academia is to enjoy your job every day. I wish I had realized that in my earlier years as an academic pharmacist. ɋ

Emily Jacobs is a freelance writer based in Toledo, Ohio.

Dr. Hernandez with Lee Vermeulen, AACP Executive Vice President and CEO; and Dr. Adam Bress during a visit to the AACP offices in October. The visit focused on ways to better connect AACP and the NAM fellowship to advance the profession.

Raising Awareness to End an Epidemic

Opioid use and the spread of illicit fentanyl continue to pose a risk to public health. Pharmacy schools are working to educate students and the public about substance use disorder, reduce stigma and encourage communities to embrace harm-reduction strategies.

By Jane E. Rooney

The story of the ongoing opioid crisis in the United States has unfortunately become too familiar, the distressing statistics no longer a surprise. Opioids were involved in 75 percent of all drug overdose deaths in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Recently, a sharp increase in overdose deaths due to illicitly made fentanyl has raised new concerns. The CDC reported that 71,238 Americans died in 2021 as a result of a fentanyl-related overdose. With at least 18 states now reporting the emergence of “rainbow” fentanyl pills that are brightly colored and could be mistaken for candy, the need to raise awareness and educate communities is paramount.

Prescription Drug Misuse Education and Research (PREMIER) Center: https://uh.edu/ pharmacy/research/ centers-and-institutes/ the-premier-center/

“We have a chronic opioid issue that’s been going back decades and now an acute fentanyl issue on top of that,” said Dr. Douglas Thornton, associate professor of pharmaceutical health outcomes and policy and director of the Prescription Drug Misuse Education and Research (PREMIER) Center at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy. “In Houston we’re getting hit particularly hard but it’s nationwide. Any street drug can have a fatal dose of fentanyl in it. That’s the big message coming out of DEA: One pill can kill. It sounds dramatic but it’s especially important today. Individuals think they are purchasing Adderall or a sleeping pill when they are actually contaminated with a lethal dose of fentanyl. Compounding that problem is a practice of pressing pills—these substances are being pressed to look like pharmaceutical products. Students can buy a stimulant and inadvertently consume fentanyl.”

Evidence also indicates that the opioid epidemic worsened during the pandemic. “We’re wired for interacting with each other,” noted Dr. Mark Garofoli, clinical assistant professor, West Virginia University School of Pharmacy. “In Covid times, it was completely foreseeable in the beginning that if everyone is isolating and distancing and we’re not interacting, that would not bode well for patients with substance use disorder. In the past few months we’ve been seeing numbers coming in and it’s not surprising. That needed isolation facilitated more of the tragic parts associated with that.”

Dr. Kelsey Schmuhl, assistant professor of clinical pharmacy, The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy, agreed with Garofoli’s assessment. “Anecdotally I know from the patients in my clinic that we saw more social isolation, a lack of access to resources as things went virtual, a loss of in-person support groups…a lot of things combined to make the situation worse for our patients. It was a perfect storm. We did see overdose deaths increase during the pandemic.”

Substance use disorder (SUD) has been included in the curriculum at most pharmacy schools for some time. Now some schools are broadening their approach and training future pharmacists to take a more holistic look at how to care for these patients and decrease the stigma surrounding SUD.

Conversations Within Communities

West Virginia has been hit particularly hard by the opioid crisis. According to the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy, 91 percent of fatal overdoses in the state in 2021 involved fentanyl. The state is now seeing a surge in illicitly made fentanyl. “Illicit fentanyl has been made all across the globe. Precursors of chemicals made in other countries and being exported here—that’s nothing new,”

Garofoli explained. “That was done with heroin. Before that it was cocaine. What is new is the criminal genius of the illicit supply chain. They are always adapting. They are well ahead of law enforcement, healthcare and the public. Fentanyl is much more friendly to the illicit supply chain because its potency affords it the opportunity to be shipped and distributed across the globe much more easily.”

Rainbow fentanyl’s colorful appearance does make it more provocative and therefore potentially a greater threat, but Garofoli cautioned against sensationalizing the danger. “What we’ve talked about in our communities is to go to the objective information,” he said. “We need to have more conversations in healthcare to educate student pharmacists and medical students to go over soft skills and how to have these conversations and be impactful. That happens through one-on-one interactions and going out into communities.”

Giving student pharmacists the opportunity to interact with patients in the community is a priority at WVU’s School of Pharmacy. One APPE rotation at a clinic in downtown Morgantown that helps underserved populations provides students with the chance to care for patients with SUD. “Students have these moments of, ‘wow, how have I been thinking about this?’ This is the ground zero of the opioid crisis,” he noted. “It’s about getting a little uncomfortable while making sure all educational outcomes are being met. The experiential education realm allows student pharmacists to be in these eye-opening patient care situations.”

Almost every pharmacy school curriculum addresses the topics of SUD, addiction and drug use, Garofoli continued, but there is an opportunity to effect change in how students approach care for this population. “It’s important to remember that there is a lot of stigma around this genre of patient care. We have to be training our student pharmacists to handle it when the opportunity arises. Everyone has preconceived notions, so it’s about going over all the information and watching our words so we remain objective. We want to be able to train and educate our student pharmacists to handle the conversations but we have to remember the audience.”

The vast majority of pharmacy schools are doing a good job educating students on substance use disorder, he said, by talking to experts and keeping current with new developments. “Pharmacy educators have to think about how this is being taught. Whether it’s going to conferences or pulling in people from across the country to do guest lectures. If a given school leader or course coordinator is trying to figure out if they need to do anything different…sometimes we need to change things up. Getting feedback from students and educators to exchange best practices is key.”

While Garofoli acknowledged that dispensing pharmacists are saving lives every single day with naloxone, he cautioned, “For us as pharmacists to think we are going to solve the crisis by manning every man, woman and child with naloxone is not realistic. We do need naloxone next to every defibrillator and to have it in a location where people can utilize it. Many of us do trainings on naloxone administration. It’s very easy to administer, but you can’t help someone if you don’t have it.” As the most accessible healthcare professionals, pharmacists are present in every community and can capitalize on that to help inform the public. “That education needs to transcend from the healthcare setting into everyday life.”

“Giving students the opportunity to work with other professions to care for patients in a comprehensive way and care for that patient holistically is really important. There’s room to educate pharmacy students about things that impact care beyond medicine— things that might affect a patient’s access to medicine or their willingness to participate in treatment. Learning about social determinants of health and getting the whole picture of why a patient may present the way they do can be helpful in addition to the drug-specific knowledge.”

—Dr. Kelsey Schmuhl

Separate but Connected Issues

As Houston’s Thornton pointed out, prescription opioid misuse is not a new problem in the United States. Prescriptions peaked in 2012 and have been declining, but many individuals became predisposed to receiving opioids for pain control. “We were somewhat in a stabilization phase before Covid. During Covid, the data that came out show that deaths have increased dramatically,” he said. “Part of it is the chronic issue. There was more social isolation, more financial issues that are driving people to consume mind-altering substances to cope with hardships. Essentially, we had to do a lot of things in this country to protect people from disease, but for people who are predisposed to misuse substances— drugs, alcohol, even food—we’re in a place now where we’re dealing with two different arms of it. Pharmacists need to understand that as a piece of the public health infrastructure, it is two separate issues that are connected.”

In 2020, Thornton and two colleagues received funding to build a curriculum around substance use disorders, making Houston one of only two colleges of pharmacy to do so at the time. “We were able to develop and implement a 12-hour curriculum for pharmacy, medicine, social work and nursing,” he explained. “There was a need on a national level for pharmacy schools to step into leadership roles alongside other healthcare disciplines. We’re trying to spread this curriculum, which addresses stigma, screening, referrals, social assessment, treatment options and resources.” The key is interdisciplinary training, looking beyond treatment to focus on the broader health services and letting students hear directly from patients afflicted with substance use disorder. “Some of that was lost during Covid. It’s been critical for us to make sure the students are hearing from the people they will ultimately be serving and treating in the community.”

Thornton is a founding co-director of The PREMIER Center, which was established in December 2018 to improve patient outcomes by providing education on safe and effective controlled substance prescription use. Research efforts concentrate on optimizing pharmacotherapy to manage pain and substance use disorders. “We have 10 faculty, three post-doc fellows, one of which is a Pharm.D., five graduate students and 4-10 Pharm.D. students doing research with us,” he said. “We serve as a local and statewide resource for a lot of these things. We are advocates for the pharmacy profession but also because most of us are pharmacists, we hopefully serve as a benchmark of sorts.”

Pharmacists have been asked to shoulder a significant workload during the parallel opioid and pandemic crises, he continued. “It’s a difficult time to be a community pharmacist when we are asking them to do more with little incentive. We want to figure out more administrative ways to incentivize our pharmacy workforce to help patients in desperate need.” Most pharmacists are willing to go the extra mile to help patients with screening and referral, but patients aren’t always receiving equitable care due to the stigma against people using opioids. “We need to be reimbursing pharmacists for their time and effort to help patients navigate the complex healthcare system.”

“It’s important to remember that there is a lot of stigma around this genre of patient care. We have to be training our student pharmacists to handle it when the opportunity arises. Everyone has preconceived notions, so it’s about going over all the information and watching our words so we remain objective. We want to be able to train and educate our student pharmacists to handle the conversations but we have to remember the audience.”

—Dr. Mark Garofoli

Interprofessional Engagement

An innovative program in Ohio could provide a model for other schools seeking a more comprehensive approach to training healthcare professionals about SUD. When the Ohio Attorney General’s Scientific Committee on Opioid Prevention and Education (SCOPE) identified a gap in provider training for SUD and a need for standardized educational experiences, The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy designed an interprofessional program that ran as a pilot last spring. Schmuhl, who co-chaired the committee that helped design the course, said, “The results [of SCOPE’s survey] showed some gaps not only in training, but also in understanding things like social determinants of health and the ethics surrounding treating someone with SUD, so there were a few objectives they identified.”

Participating students engaged in a six-week asynchronous course that covered six modules: the neurobiology of opioid use disorder; treatment; adverse childhood experiences; social determinants of health; motivational interviewing; and ethics and stigma. Students then applied that knowledge during a threehour synchronous virtual symposium that concluded with a collaborative escape room learning experience. “It was an engaging way for students to work together through a complex patient case and show their knowledge and what they gained from the program,” Schmuhl noted. “Our instructional designers helped us develop the escape room in a virtual platform. In spring 2022 we had 238 students complete both portions. We had students from around the state representing dentistry, nurse practitioners, medicine, physician assistants and pharmacy. It was mainly marketed through members of our subcommittee so they offered it in different ways. Some faculty incorporated it into a course. I offered it as an elective course at Ohio State.”

Schmuhl and a colleague received a grant from OSU’s Office of Outreach and Engagement to expand the program, which they plan to continue with some tweaks. “Some of the student feedback was about the lack of social work representation. They wanted more content related to social work within the modules,” she explained. “We did offer it again in the fall with social work students participating. We’re planning to do another round this spring. One of our goals is to do a research study to learn about student perceptions of working on an interprofessional team to care for patients with substance use disorder. A longerterm goal is to turn the program into CE for practicing healthcare professionals.”

In teaching SUD to third-year student pharmacists, Schmuhl said she advocates for harm-reduction strategies and carrying naloxone. Regarding fentanyl, she noted that there are fentanyl test strips but they are still considered to be drug paraphernalia in the state. “We need to work to decriminalize those strips in Ohio. That’s a barrier to increasing access to harm-reduction strategies.”

As Thornton noted, raising awareness among younger audiences is also a key strategy. “We need to make sure all of our adolescent kids and older understand that any previous relative ease of access to street drugs is not as innocuous as they think. It’s very dangerous right now the amount of fentanyl in what is sold,”

Scientific Committee on Opioid Prevention and Education

(SCOPE): https://www. ohioattorneygeneral. gov/SCOPE

—Dr.

he said. “The problem is it’s from folks who don’t even know they are selling or purchasing fentanyl. Any type of illicit drug use is particularly risky right now. The bigger picture is the people who are illicitly using prescription opioids to alleviate symptoms. Pharmacists are the most accessible healthcare provider in the community. They can be that key referral point to other parts of the healthcare system.”

Beyond traditional education in the classroom and understanding treatment options, Schmuhl believes that the best way to prepare student pharmacists to care for patients with SUD is through hands-on experience. “Giving students the opportunity to work with other professions to care for patients in a comprehensive way and care for that patient holistically is really important,” she observed. “There’s room to educate pharmacy students about things that impact care beyond medicine—things that might affect a patient’s access to medicine or their willingness to participate in treatment. Learning about social determinants of health and getting the whole picture of why a patient may present the way they do can be helpful in addition to the drug-specific knowledge.”

She emphasized that pharmacists can play a key role in working to decrease stigma around SUD and opioid use. “We have work to do in community pharmacies and decreasing the stigma around treatment. We need to make our pharmacy environment a safe place where patients can come to get treatment and connect with a healthcare provider they can trust. The area of decreasing stigma is one of the biggest places we can be champions right now.” ɋ

About PharmON

Established in 2022, the Pharmacy Opportunities Network (PharmON) is a national career center where a diverse array of corporations, associations and other entities can post experiential learning oppor tunities, such as internships or jobs, to thousands of current Pharm.D. students, residents, fellows, graduate students and practicing pharmacists.

Sponsored by:

Questions?

Visit the AACP website for more information, including comprehensive FAQs, at w www.aacp.org/resource/ pharmon-faqs. Contact Tom Maggio, r,

with any questions about PharmON, at tmaggio@aacp.org.

Jane E. Rooney is managing editor of Academic Pharmacy Now.

“It’s a difficult time to be a community pharmacist when we are asking them to do more with little incentive. We want to figure out more administrative ways to incentivize our pharmacy workforce to help patients in desperate need.”

Douglas Thornton

Experience Fresh Ideas and New Solutions at INnovate 2023

Collaborate with your colleagues, Feb. 18–21, in Orlando, Fla., and develop innovative strategies to solve some of the most pressing challenges facing today’s pharmacy educators and practitioners.

February 18-21, 2023

• Orlando, Fla.

Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld

Experience two dynamic keynote speakers who kick off the meeting at sessions addressing disruption in health professions education and how to create a highperforming organizational culture.

At other informative sessions, you will:

• Discover tools to assess and manage faculty workload

• Learn how others have successfully mitigated the financial impact of student enrollment decline

• Explore contemporary legal issues facing pharmacy education

Dive into a host of amenities at INnovate 2023’s host hotel, the Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld. From a pool and waterpark, to multiple restaurant offerings, there’s something for everyone to enjoy. Start planning your stay: https://renseaworld.ipoolside.com

• Engage in debate over online certificates and digital badges

• Connect with colleagues who share your position to discuss timely, rolerelevant topics across multiple roundtables and networking sessions; and more!

There’s still time to connect with the Academy at INnovate 2023!

Regular registration rates apply through Feb. 21.

Register today: https://www.aacp.org/article/innovate-2023-registration

AACP greatly appreciates the support from our meeting sponsors, whose contributions make this event possible:

Gold Sponsor

Silver Sponsors

Bronze Sponsors

MCO

Additional Sponsors

Want to gain exposure to national leaders in pharmacy education? Explore sponsorship opportunities for INnovate 2023 and beyond by contacting Vicki Cummins and Janet Carassai at 856-429-0100 or sponsorship@aacp.org

AACP Annual Meeting

July 22–26 Aurora, Colo.

Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center

Call for 2023 Annual Meeting Poster Abstract Submissions

AACP members are invited to submit poster abstracts for Pharmacy Education 2023, under the following three poster categories: Research and Education Abstracts, Trainee Poster Competition Abstracts, and School Poster Abstracts. The School Poster theme this year is Strengthening Student Success: Investing in the Future of Pharmacy

https://www.aacp.org/article/pharmacy-education-2023-submission-information

ɋ Research and Education Abstracts Deadline: Feb. 24

ɋ Trainee Poster Competition Abstracts Deadline: Feb. 24

ɋ School Poster Abstracts Deadline: March 31

AJPE Partners with Elsevier, Inc. to Streamline Production and Improve Reader Experience

AACP is thrilled to announce a new co-publishing partnership with Elsevier, Inc., a global leader in the academic publishing industry, to help improve AACP’s flagship publication, the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education (AJPE).

Beginning in early 2023, AJPE will transition its self-publishing operation to Elsevier, which will deliver new features, enhanced tools, and extensive production expertise to the Journal. Below are just a few of these enhancements that we are excited to deliver to its readers:

ɋ AJPE joins Science Direct, a world-class collection of scientific and medical publications with a large-scale distribution platform. Including AJPE in this collection will give the Journal, and the papers published in it, added visibility, and will raise the profile of pharmaceutical education within the healthcare and science research arenas.

ɋ Additional production support from Elsevier’s team of experts will allow the Journal to improve its publishing efficiency and increase productivity, while upholding the Journal’s highest level of editorial quality. This partnership will also provide new and exciting tools for authors, reviewers, and the Editorial Team and Board.

ɋ Streamlining AJPE’s publishing operations with Elsevier will allow AACP to gain efficiencies, re-allocate staff to new tasks and eliminate multiple vendor relationships. As a result of these cost savings, the association will be able to better serve our members.

ɋ Enhanced publication features, including the ability to publish graphics, tables, and figures in color, will greatly improve the clarity of published papers and enhance AJPE’s reader experience.

ɋ As part of the selection process, we ensured that under this co-publishing agreement, AJPE will retain full editorial authority and responsibility, and AACP members will continue to enjoy free access to all Journal content.

More details about this exciting transition will be made available in the coming months!