March 7, 2016
Three PGY1 community pharmacy residents at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy are recipients of APhA Foundation Incentive Grants. They will be recognized at the APhA 2016 Annual Meeting and Exposition March 4–7 in Baltimore.
Hannah Renner, Laura Rhodes and Breanna Sunderman were selected for the grant; Sunderman was also selected to present an APhA Patient Care Services Pearl, a 15-minute presentation about an innovation that would benefit pharmacists.
Macary Marciniak, Pharm.D., is the director of the PGY1 Community Pharmacy Residency Program and a clinical associate professor in the Division of Practice Advancement and Clinical Education.
“I think it speaks to the caliber of UNC’s residency programs,” she said. “Each project is very cutting edge. I think they represent what’s going on at the forefront of community pharmacy today. Each of their projects is meant to solve a problem, solve an issue that is going on in the real world and hopefully will be very relevant to the whole practicing community.”
Hannah Renner, who graduated from the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, is completing her residency at Walgreens of Chapel Hill. Her study, entitled “Closing Therapeutic Gaps for Statin Use in Patients with Diabetes,” will assess a pharmacist-led intervention to increase the proportion of patients with diabetes placed on statin therapy, thereby increasing quality performance and Medicare Star Ratings.
“I’m very thankful to the UNC Community Pharmacy Residency Program for affording me the opportunity to explore my areas of interest in quality through my research project,” Renner said.
Laura Rhodes, who graduated from the Gregory School of Pharmacy at Palm Beach Atlantic University, is completing her residency at Moose Pharmacy.
Her research study, entitled “Implementation of a Vaccine Screening Program at an Independent Community Pharmacy,” aims to identify best practices in community pharmacy workflow for a vaccine screening program. The data collected will be used to identify the best place within workflow to implement such a program.
“The overall impact of the project is designed to increase immunizations administered and decrease vaccine-preventable illness within the community,” Rhodes said. “I am appreciative to the APhA Foundation and the UNC PGY1 Community Pharmacy Residency Program for their generous support of this project.”
Breanna Sunderman graduated from the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy and is completing her residency at Kroger. Her research, entitled “Training Pharmacy Technicians for Roles in Immunization Advocacy: Focus on Tdap Vaccination,” is a third-year continuation project looking at technician involvement and immunization rates.
“Innovative strategies need to be created and implemented to take action incorporating vaccine education into the pharmacy workflow,” she said.
Her separate Pearl presentation will focus on veterinary community pharmacy. Each of the residents will present a poster at the meeting to share the goals and progress of their research.
“Each of them has a unique project that works to serve a really relevant practice need and was exciting enough to the national groups that they thought it would be worthwhile to fund that initiative and take it to the next step.”
Marciniak said that, as the oldest pharmacy residency program in the country, the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy has a record of graduating leaders and innovators in the profession.
“I think receiving these types of grants and being selected to do these presentations showcases the innovation that we have here at UNC and something we really focus on: training the next generation of practice leaders.”
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