February 13, 2015
Veterinary pharmacist Gigi Davidson has been named the recipient of the 2015 Beal Award for Distinguished Volunteer Service, the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention’s highest award.
Davidson is a preceptor for the veterinary pharmacy rotation at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is director of clinical pharmacy services at the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Raleigh.
“Davidson is an exemplary leader,” says USP Chief Executive Officer Ronald T. Piervincenzi. “Although she has made significant contributions as a member of various expert committees since 2000, her strength as a leader really shone in the 2010–2015 cycle.”
First Female, First Veterinary Pharmacist Recipient
The award is given once every five years and honors those who have made outstanding contributions to the public health while serving as a USP volunteer. The USP is a global health organization that advocates public standards and related programs to ensure the quality, safety, and benefit of medicines and foods. Its standards are used worldwide.
Chosen for her contributions in developing standards for compounding for both human and animal patients during a critical period in public health, Davidson is the fifth person to receive the Beal Award and the first woman and the first veterinary pharmacist to be honored. The award will be presented at the USP Convention Membership Meeting April 22 – 25, 2015 in Washington, D.C.
Davidson was elected as chair of the Compounding Expert Committee in 2010 and played a major leadership role in USP’s response to several public health crises involving contaminated compounded preparations.
During her tenure, Davidson was actively engaged in multiple expert committees, advisory panels, and industry forums and oversaw the development of more than thirty new compounded preparation monographs.
She also spearheaded the development of the USP on Compounding: A Guide for the Compounding Practitioner, which became the USP Compounding Compendium, USP’s newest publication. It is a collection of essential compounding standards for pharmacy practitioners and regulatory authorities alike.
“We deeply appreciate not only Gigi’s unique expertise in compounding pharmacy, but her skill as an arbiter of challenging issues, her ability to balance the pragmatic needs of compounding practitioners while helping to ensure patient safety and her talent for working collaboratively across a wide variety of interest groups,” says Shawn Becker, MS, BSN, USP’s senior director of healthcare quality standards.
Under Davidson’s leadership, the Compounding Expert Committee won the 2012-2013 USP Award for an Outstanding Contribution to the Standard-Setting Process in recognition to its response to the compounding crises and its impact on improving public health.
At a special ceremony during the USP Convention Meeting, Davidson will receive a crystal sculpture representing USP’s spirit of voluntarism, an honorary lifetime membership to the USP Convention and a $10,000 cash award which Davidson has directed be donated to the veterinary pharmacy residency program at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
“Among veterinary pharmacists, there is no equal,” said Mark Papich, DVM, MS, professor of clinical pharmacology at the NCSU College of Veterinary.
“Veterinary pharmacy is unique because of the variety of animals we treat and the need for specialized medications. There is no textbook or pharmacy curriculum course that teaches this material. So, Gigi Davidson invented it and literally changed veterinary pharmacy from an obscure area of clinical pharmacy to the highly specialized discipline it is today. She established one of the first veterinary residency training programs for veterinary pharmacists, and this gift will help ensure that veterinary pharmacy will continue to develop as a specialized pharmacy practice.”
Davidson also sits on multiple boards including the American College of Veterinary Pharmacists and the Pharmacy Compounding Accreditation Board Standards Committee and has served on FDA Task Force on Compounding in Veterinary Medicine, as well as the FDA/AVMA Ad Hoc Committee on Veterinary Compounding.
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