The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy student chapter won the chapter of the year award at AMCP Nexus 2016, held Oct. 3-6 in National Harbor, Maryland.
Managed-care practice focuses on a number of different activities, including managing the drug-distribution process, ensuring patient safety through population management of medications, developing and implementing clinical programs and designing effective pharmacy benefits to ensure cost-effective drug choices that are clinically appropriate.
The chapter prides itself on bringing awareness about pharmacists in nontraditional roles and promoting careers in managed-care pharmacy, said PY3Colleen McCabe, the current chapter president.
“We’ve been trying to offer more opportunities to students,” she said. “We’ve really grown and gotten more recognition from within the School, so to get this award from AMCP was a real honor for us and really exciting.
PY4 Alvin Ong, last year’s chapter president, said winning the chapter of the year award was an incredible achievement, particularly because the chapter is fairly new and still has a lot of potential.
“Our chapter consists of only 40 to 50 members, far smaller than other student organizations, but our exec team saw that as an advantage rather than a disadvantage,” he said. “We succeeded in tailoring our AMCP student chapter to a common vision in that we established innovative and quality events to promote managed-care pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry.”
Chapter faculty adviser Joel Farley, Ph.D., said there’s been a lot of growth in the number of students who have taken interest in Managed Care pharmacy. Farley is a professor in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy.
“It’s neat because I keep seeing growth in the program over time,” he said. “Part of this recognition stems from all the great managed-care activities our current student leaders in the chapter are providing, but part of it is from all efforts provided by our prior student leaders and how those have grown over time. We now have a number of former students that have completed managed-care fellowships and internship and are working in managed-care organizations.”
McCabe said the chapter was given a $1,000 cash prize, which she said will allow members to focus on hosting events instead of fundraising.