Palm Beach Atlantic University Lloyd L. Gregory School of Pharmacy

Palm Beach Atlantic University Gregory School of Pharmacy

From the Office of the Dean The Lloyd L. Gregory School of Pharmacy at Palm Beach Atlantic University is making a difference in communities across Florida and around the world. It is a privilege to provide this annual update to our friends and colleagues throughout the great state of Florida and beyond, sharing some Dr. Jeff Lewis of the exciting ways in which we are relentlessly pursuing our mission, Pharmacy with Faith.

The faculty of the Gregory School of Pharmacy have been recognized across the nation for their innovative spirit and leadership in teaching, scientific discovery, clinical practice and professional engagement. Yet, for me, it’s their commitment to preparing the next generation of pharmacists to meet the needs of others – patients, caregivers, colleagues – that truly sets them apart.

I’m grateful for the investment that they make in the lives of students each and every day. But, they cannot do this alone. Without you – colleagues throughout the state who so generously and selflessly invest in the lives of our students as preceptors, lecturers, mentors, scholarship funders, encouragers and so much more – we could not realize the outcomes that you’ve come to expect from a PBAU graduate. And so, for all that you do, I say thank you. You’re the best!

I also wish to thank our colleagues at the Florida Pharmacy Association for their unwavering commitment to the welfare of our profession and for the opportunity to share this update with you through Florida Pharmacy Today.

Serving others with excellence and compassion, and doing so in a manner that addresses real-world problems, are core to our existence. This update will focus on two areas of engagement, in particular, aimed at pursuing these outcomes: meeting the needs of the under-served and improving the business dynamics of community pharmacy, both of which, I firmly believe, improve the well-being of our communities.

You’ll read of the manner in which our students, faculty, alumni and friends are selflessly investing their time, talent and treasure in bettering the lives of underserved populations in south Florida and around the world. From the full-time clinical presence of Dr. Justine Latif at Caridad Center, Florida’s largest health care clinic for underserved populations, to short-term medical mission initiatives in countries such as the Dominican Republic and Uganda, our team counts it a privilege to care for those without sufficient means to care for themselves.

You’ll also read of the manner in which PBAU is actively engaging community pharmacies throughout Florida aimed at modeling and implementing sustainable expansions of pharmacist services, improving community health while achieving greater fiscal stability in the pharmacy. From the nation-leading engagement of Drs. Erin Dorval and Laura Rhodes in the Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network and the national Flip-the-Pharmacy initiatives to the development of an entrepreneurial spirit in our students via an off-the-charts APPE rotation in Independent Community Pharmacy Ownership, PBAU is doing our part to model and support the ability of pharmacists to thrive in their professional pursuits.

Before turning your attention more fully to these encouraging updates, I want to highlight a couple of very special people in our PBAU community who have been recognized for living out the essence of the Gregory School of Pharmacy. The first is rising P4 student, Elizabeth Davis.

Davis is not only an excellent student in the classroom, but is also a servant-leader among her peers, always envisioning and implementing ways of improving the lives of

Elizabeth Davis

Sarah Haley

those around her. Her long-term plans include engaging her faith and professional knowledge as a full-time medical missionary. This past year, Davis was recognized for her achievements by the Florida Pharmacy Foundation as the recipient of the 2019 Terry Gubbins Student Leadership Award. The second is Dr. Sarah Haley, PBAU ’15. Dr. Haley practices at Walgreens Pharmacy and Kindred Healthcare in the

greater Tampa area. In both practice environments, Dr. Haley demonstrates a selfless concern for her patients, her colleagues and the students that she regularly educates and mentors. In recognition of her early-career involvement and dedication to the practice of pharmacy, Dr. Haley received the 2019 Pharmacists Mutual Distinguished Young Pharmacist Award from the Florida Pharmacy Association.

I trust that you’ll not only be informed but encouraged by this update from Palm Beach Atlantic University. We view ourselves as a resource to the profession of pharmacy and the communities that we, collectively, serve. So, as always, never hesitate to let me know if and how my team can be of service to yours.

Caring for our communities through pharmacy,

Dr. Jeff Lewis Dean

Serving the Underserved

Serving the health care needs of underserved populations in our local community and around the world is a priority at GSOP. This past year our students, faculty and alumni led or participated in an array of medical mission trips, health fairs and community events aimed at educating and serving the citizens of Palm Beach County and beyond.

Gregory Center for Medical Missions

The Gregory Center for Medical Missions was launched in 2013 with a purpose to guide the school’s engagement in medical mission initiatives and raise the bar for pharmacy’s engagement in this very important space. During the summer of 2019, under the direction of Dr. Dana Strachan, GCMM sent mission teamscomprised of students, faculty, residents, alumni and various friends of the school to the Dominican Republic, Nigeria and Uganda. During these trips, 1,955 patients were served and 5,250 medications were dispensed.

Since 2003, GCMM and the school of pharmacy have facilitated 55 medical mission teams serving 15 different domestic and international locations. These dedicated servantleaders have been instrumental in meeting the health-related needs of almost 20,000 people.

The Gregory Center for Medical Missions looks forward to serving communities near and far in the coming year.

In October 2019, GSOP hosted its Annual Community Health Fair at Palm Beach Atlantic University’s Marshall and Vera Lea Rinker Athletic Campus. The site was filled with more than 25 health care-related information booths designed to educate, entertain, and serve the health needs of members of the local community. By the time the fourhour annual event wrapped up, 200 men, women and children from the nearby neighborhoods had taken advantage of the services being offered by GSOP students, faculty and alumni.

Seventy-five GSOP student-pharmacists designed, coordinated and operated this year’s health fair, with supportive guidance from six faculty members. Additionally, the students recruited the participation of the Palm Beach County Health Care District, which brought a mobile clinic along with two physicians and two nurses; the Palm Beach County Behavioral Health Coalition; and Premier Dental Care Center. The support of these local agencies/partners contributed greatly to the overall success Class of 2017 alumnus Kurt of the event. Pessa, Pharm.D., was on hand Then, in early November, stufor Walgreens Pharmacy, giving dents, residents and faculty volout 30 free flu-shots. unteered at the Belle Glade

Community-Wide Health &

Wellness Festival. Despite windy and rainy conditions, our GSOP team served around 100 community guests offering health education along with blood pressure and blood glucose screenings.

Finally, at the invitation of the city of West Palm Beach, our student-pharmacists served the needs of the community at the very popular weekly West

Palm Beach Green Mar

ket. Over three weekends in January and February, GSOP’s APhA, Phi Delta Chi and ACCP stuP4 student Sandra Ghaly serves the residents of Belle Glade. dent chapters volunteered to provide blood pressure and blood glucose checks to the market’s attendees. APhA Student Chapter President Javier Barrios called it “an incredible experience that offered us the opportunity to raise awareness about the value pharmacists and student-pharmacists provide our community.”

GSOP at Caridad Center Developing the next generation of servant leaders can be fostered by direct contributions to like-minded organizations in the community. Historically, a large part of that service has included efforts to engage and enhance the care provided by year round clinics for the underserved in our community. Caridad Center is the largest free clinic in the state of Florida and has served the local community faithJustine Lati fully since 1992. GSOP has partnered with this organization to provide support to its patients in a number of ways over the years. More recently, the partnership has thrived through the work of Dr. Justine Latif. Dr. Latif began serving at the Center almost two years ago, after she completed an ambulatory care residency at GSOP. Her activities have included patient education as well as assistance to prescribers in the center. Dr. Latif often assists in identifying low cost options for medications and engages patients to understand and manage chronic conditions such as diabetes more effectively.

As a full-time employee of GSOP, Dr. Latif mentors students from the school as they learn critical skills in therapy guidance and patient engagement. The students’ energy and concern are evident in the clinic, and the students quickly become a part of the warm and welcoming atmosphere that defines the care provided across the center’s many programs.

Caridad provides services to all ages, and emphasizes several social programs focused on housing, food security and educational enrichment. In addition to primary care medical services, a dental clinic and an eye clinic are part of the health care services provided by the staff and a host of volunteers. The addition of enhanced pharmacy services contributes a new dimension in care, and the student experience adds to their understanding of service to the underserved community and application of their knowledge to improve the care of individual patients in this unique setting.

Many students point to these experiences as some of the most valuable in their training, as they can see the full potential of their professional activities improving the health and well-being of all patients in the community.

Responding to Community Needs in a Crisis

As anxiety about COVID-19 grew, Gregory School of Pharmacy professor Dr. Erin Doval and Atlantis Pharmacy’s owner, Dr. Damien Simmons, put their ingenuity to work to formulate and package hand sanitizer for frontline health care workers and patients.

Dorval, an assistant professor of pharmacy practice, tested out a few formulas before settling on the most pharmaceutically elegant version. She made one batch, and then another and another. All told, the team compounded an estimated 350, three-ounce pump bottles of much-needed hand sanitizer for our community. Atlantis Pharmacy gave the bottles to nearby doctors’ offices, hospitals and health care workErin Dorval ers, then distributed the remaining supply to patients.

“It was super cool,” Dorval said. “It was probably the nerdy pharmacist-professor coming out in me. To know that somebody needed it, and I was able to make it, that was Hand sanitizer compounded at Atlantis Pharmacy by GSOP the fun part.” professor Dr. Erin Dorval.

Entrepreneurism

Team GSOP understands that the opportunity to remain engaged in serving people is dependent on sustainable business models, and we are committed to supporting our students/graduates and our professional colleagues in achieving financial stability. We’re doing so in the classroom, in the experiential education arena and in our relationships with community pharmacies. Here’s a glimpse at our endeavors this past year.

‘Shark Tank’-style Student Business Competition

Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Dr. John Dougherty coordinates the school’s Pharmacy Application of Pharmacoeconomics, Management and Informatics course. And, in 2019, he infused an entrepreneurially oriented project into the syllabus. Students pitched creative business proposals to treat asthma, reduce hospital readmission rates and improve drug performance. A panel of successful health care business leaders served as judges for the event. The panel included Dr. Punit Patel, president of Red Oak Sourcing; Mr. Raju Mantena, chairman and CEO of Ingenus Pharmaceuticals; and Mrs. Susan Petrovas, founder of Managed Care Network and co-founder of CDMI LLC.

The winning proposal was presented by students Ian Clarke, Nicole Latinkich, Mehrnoush Mohammadpour and Isabelle Serbulescu. They called for hospitals to hire additional pharmacists to provide at-home medication counseling to decrease re-admission rates. Using data from a Home Health Care Nurse Association study, the students determined that two additional pharmacists could make 1,412 home visits in a year — more visits than a local hospital would need to service its patients. A decrease of even two or three percentage points in readmission rates would save the

Judges and the winning team for the Gregory School of Pharmacy’s 2019 Entrepreneurship Challenge (L-R): Raju Mantena, Susan Petrovas, Isabella Serbulescu, Ian Clarke, Mehrnoush Mohammadpour, Nicole Latinkich and Dr. Punit Patel.

hospital thousands of dollars.

“The students’ plan reflected the future of patient care — nurses, doctors, pharmacists and others collaborating,”Petrovas said. “The future of health care should be a team, taking care of patients as whole.”

Independent Community Pharmacy Ownership APPE

Continuing the school’s efforts to foster entrepreneurism, the Gregory School of Pharmacy launched an exciting sixweek advanced pharmacy practice experience rotation in independent community pharmacy ownership.

This elective rotation was designed in coordination with Dr. Bill Mincy and Mr. Raju Mantena, both of AlliantRx, to introduce students to the various roles of a pharmacy owner in a community pharmacy practice setting and provide an opportunity to apply knowledge and skills acquired through didactic education and introductory pharmacy practice experiences. The students spend a portion of the rotation at nearby Winships Pharmacy, with owner Daniel Vacca, RPh. MBA, then travel to the New England area to spend time with the leadership of AlliantRx.

They have the opportunity to work directly with independent pharmacy owners, engaging in a range of unique pharmacy-related services to a diverse patient population and gain an appreciation of the inner workings of the community pharmacy world – human resources management, supply chain management, payor systems and more. The first several students who completed this unique rotation were also enrolled in the university’s dual Pharm.D./MBA degree program.

PharmD / MBA Dual Degree Track

Recognizing that the pharmacy workspace has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, GSOP’s Pharm.D./MBA dual degree program is designed to educate and develop students with foundational skills needed to be executives and managers in the pharmaceutical industry and other health care environments.

The program is directed toward providing didactic and experiential education to students that will allow them to: understand the major functional areas in managing health care organizations and patient care systems; and design and implement strategies and policies that produce effective management practices within changing health care environments.

Expanding Community Pharmacy Services As we consider GSOP’s passionate focus on expanding community pharmacy services, it’s our privilege to do so by spotlighting one of our faculty, 2015 GSOP alumni Dr. Laura Rhodes. During her PGY1 community-based pharmacy residency and community practice engagement fellowship at the University of North Carolina, Dr. Rhodes gained significant knowledge reLaura Rhodes garding advanced communitybased pharmacy practice models, the Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Networks, and how to provide longitudinal patient care and enhanced clinical services in a traditional community pharmacy setting. While her time in North Carolina was both educational and inspiring, she felt a calling to return to her alma mater to help facilitate the implementation of similar programs and initiatives in Florida.

Through the support and vision of GSOP, Dr. Rhodes has been afforded the opportunity to make this dream a reality within our local communities. The school’s vision of expanding community-based pharmacy practice is being executed through a model in which she consults with community-based pharmacies in Palm Beach County (or neighboring counties) to aid in the integration or improvement of enhanced pharmacy services at the practice site. Examples of projects which have been implemented include securing CLIA waivers, immunization programs and hypertensionrelated services.

Student-pharmacists are immersed in these endeavors via their engagement in the APPE rotation that she leads. Through partnerships with community pharmacies, the student-pharmacist has the opportunity to network with business owners, conceptualize and develop an enhanced service, and facilitate the implementation of the service at the practice site. The first APPE launched in May 2020 with the first student’s project being focused on the possibility of COVID-19 testing.

Flip the Pharmacy represents an additional opportunity that is complementary to the aforementioned services. Approximately 25 percent of CPESN-USA pharmacies are en

gaging in a practice transformation initiative, through which participating pharmacies focus on implementing workflow level changes related to an enhanced service. The program includes a monthly curriculum with details on the focused intervention and milestone goals for eCare plan submissions and/or measurements (e.g., blood pressure, A1C) and a monthly visit from a pharmacy practice transformation coach to help facilitate implementation.

The FtP Program is two years long and focuses on multiple types of enhanced services. The initiative in Florida is being led by Dr. Laura Rhodes and Dr. Erin Dorval. Program results at this time are preliminary, but the six participating Florida pharmacies have successfully completed the first six months of the program and have substantially increased the quantity and quality of hypertension-related eCare plans since the inception of the program.

RXPO 2019: A Careers and Clinical Education Expo for Pharmacy Professionals

The Gregory School of Pharmacy hosted its first annual RxPO on Oct 25. This re-envisioned take on the traditional career fair was successful in bringing more than 40 participating pharmacies, health systems, health care companies, and professional organizations to Palm Beach Atlantic University to meet with and engage the school’s 250-plus student-pharmacists. The event was also attended by many GSOP alumni. Several of RxPO’s participants are preceptors in the school’s experiential education curriculum. RxPO gave these preceptors the opportunity to meet our students and discuss the education and training opportunities available at their respective sites in advance of the APPE scheduling process.

The RxPO was preceded by the What’s Next Pharmacy Professional’s Panel. Student-pharmacists heard from panelists Dr. William Kernan, executive director of pharmacy for Cleveland Clinic Florida; Dr.Kimberly Jones, a pharmacist, consultant and owner of the Prescription Shop and Wellness Center of Stuart, Florida; Dr. Paulette Turner, a pharmacy manager with Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida; and Dr. Amy Henneman, director of PBA’s PGY-1 and PGY-2 Ambulatory Care residency programs.

RxPO 2020 will take place on Oct. 23 from 1-4 p.m. at Palm Beach Atlantic University. For information on registering or attending, please contact Jeff_Snow@pba.edu or visit Go.pba. edu/rxpo20

Calling All GSOP Alumni

GSOP Connect

As part of our effort to connect and serve our alumni, we are excited to announce the launch of GSOP Connect, the exclusive professional online community for GSOP alumni where members can: ■ Actively engage with classmates and old friends. ■ Network with alums serving in similar geographic or professional areas. ■ Share professional information, articles and blogs. ■ Share personal stories, experiences and encouragements. ■ Learn about and/or support medical mission opportunities in GCMM. ■ Post or discover job opportunities within our GSOP alumni community. ■ Find out about GSOP-related events and initiatives.

GSOP alumni can join the community by visiting www. gsopconnect.com. For more information on GSOP Connect, email Jeff_Snow@PBA.edu