News & Media

The week I started writing this letter, Lee Vermeulen arrived at AACP’s headquarters to begin a time of overlap with me before he assumes the role of AACP Executive Vice President and CEO on July 1. This is a time of transformation and transitions, as Lee and I will discuss during the final plenary session at Pharmacy Education 2022, our first in-person annual meeting since 2019!

Lucinda Maine looks back on how she cultivated her passion for pharmacy and highlights from her 40-plus years in the profession. She tells the story of her career as if it happened through a series of serendipitous accidents, unexpected opportunities and surprises of support. As she tells it, doors opened for her and she simply walked through them.

The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy is proud to announce it has selected 35 individuals to join its prestigious Academic Leadership Fellows Program (ALFP), a record number of accepted individuals since the program’s inception 19 years ago.

Award will support the advancement of underrepresented minority participation in COVID-19 clinical trials and contribute to the continued evaluation of FDA-approved products. Researchers from the Texas A&M University Irma Lerma Rangel College of Pharmacy and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) have been awarded $1 million from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Office of Minority Health and Health Equity (OMHHE) Innovation award: Covid-19 and Health Equity.

More than 300 emerging and established leaders in pharmacy will convene June 2-3 at the Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice Summit being held at six regional host sites across the U.S. to achieve consensus and provide action-oriented recommendations that will help move the pharmacy profession forward. Two key questions will guide participants’ discussion at the Summit: what does pharmacy workforce optimization look like, and to get to an optimized pharmacy workforce, what is needed and what changes are required in the following areas?

AACP is pleased to announce that the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE) will once again sponsor three Social and Administrative Sciences (SAS) Section Summer Research Exchange Mentorship Program awards for summer 2022. These awards of $2,500 each will support student pharmacists as they pursue research with host mentors outside of their home institutions.

An AACP Interim meeting panel explored how academic institutions can address workplace trauma. Many leaders and employees are seeing symptoms of workplace trauma in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These include fatigue, absenteeism, disengagement, sleep difficulties, feelings of guilt or shame, avoidance of certain activities and feeling a loss of control.

As I muse over the nearly 50 years since I dedicated my professional energy to pharmacy, I am at once struck by the magnitude of the change that has occurred across those years and the pace. The magnitude is indisputably enormous, yet the pace has not been what I and many others have sought. Some examples: Shortly before I entered the Auburn pharmacy program as a pre-pharmacy freshman, Act 205 of the Alabama Pharmacy Practice statute said that a pharmacist was not to put the name of the product on the prescription label.

The second Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Institute highlighted the ongoing work that pharmacy schools must do to build connections, foster authentic exchanges and be persistent in pursuing EDI goals to ensure enduring cultural change. When Dr. Michael Fulford, assistant dean for institutional effectiveness and strategic initiatives, University of Georgia College of Pharmacy, proposed opening AACP’s second Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Institute with a panel featuring student voices, it was an easy sell.

The 50 Stories from 50 States Challenge, an initiative from the ACT Pharmacy Collaborative, amplifies the vital patient care services that community pharmacies are providing nationwide. The COVID-19 pandemic magnified the value of pharmacists, especially those in community pharmacies who are highly accessible to the public.

The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy today announced the recipients of its top awards, which recognize four individuals, one institution and one scholarly paper, for their outstanding contributions made to pharmacy education, research, patient outcomes, community service and publication. Recipients will be honored at AACP’s annual meeting, Pharmacy Education 2022, July 23-27, in Grapevine, Texas.

Today, 14 pharmacy organizations urged the Biden Administration to remove barriers preventing pharmacists from ordering oral antivirals and expand patient access to the “Test to Treat” initiative announced last week during the State of the Union. In a letter sent to President Biden, the groups called for the removal of a limitation placed on the emergency use authorization (EUA) of COVID-19 antivirals by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The limitation prevents pharmacists from ordering the medications