Bob Blouin, Pharm.D., the Vaughn and Nancy Bryson Distinguished Professor and dean of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina and the director of the Eshelman Institute for Innovation, has been awarded the 2015 Don Blanton Award by the North Carolina Association of Pharmacists.
The Blanton award recognizes the pharmacist who has contributed most to the advancement of pharmacy in North Carolina during the past year.
Since becoming the dean in July of 2003, the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy has undertaken a number of innovative initiatives and seen significant growth.
Stephen Eckel, Pharm.D., the current president-elect of NCAP, attributes the dean’s award to three events of the past 12 months: the $100 million gift from Fred Eshelman that established the Eshelman Institute for Innovation, the PharmAlliance partnership between the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; and the University College London School of Pharmacy in the United Kingdom and the re-engineered Pharm.D. curriculum at the School, which launched in the fall of 2015.
“The dean’s award was really for the most impactful 12 months for North Carolina pharmacy,” Eckel said. “When you put those three things together, it was clear that he was extremely deserving of the award.”