Center to Accelerate Pharmacy Practice Transformation and Academic Innovation
In November 2021, AACP launched the Center to Accelerate Pharmacy Practice Transformation and Academic Innovation (AACP Transformation Center), a new unit within AACP’s organizational structure designed to embolden academic pharmacy’s contributions to increase the pace of change in pharmacy education and practice. AACP’s vision is that, in collaboration with its members, our work will create a world of healthy people. Optimization of medication use by integrating the expertise of pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists into current and evolving models of care delivery is an essential component, and the AACP Transformation Center (ATC) is central to this vision.
ATC has been established to address the need to educate, enhance, expand, and sustain a pharmacy workforce that contributes to medication use optimization and health outcomes. It is important for us to look both internally and externally at innovative, bold strategies to transform the future of academic pharmacy and the profession. Additionally, AACP's 2021–2024 Strategic Priorities 1 and 2 (PDF) focus on leading innovation and advancements in pharmacy education and practice, as well as enhancing collaborations and interprofessional partnerships.
Learn More
- Mission and Goals
- AACP's Executive Director of AACP Transformation Center
- ATC's first major initiative the Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice Summit
Two-pronged Mission
Accelerate Pharmacy Practice Transformation
Identify proven and promising practice transformation projects and collaboration models that are replicable and most-effectively improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities through medication use optimization, chronic disease management, and other pharmacist-provided patient-care services. Make them standards of care, then disseminate them widely through multiple channels to the greater prescriber and pharmacy community nationwide.
Accelerative Academic Innovation
Identify and implement across AACP members the most innovative changes to pharmacy educational programs that can best deliver medication use optimization, improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities by:
- Better matching didactic education with clinical training to address the highest-need population health problems.
- Increasing the ability of our graduates, new and seasoned, to practice in sustainable collaborative relationships with primary-care physicians and other prescribers.
- Fostering life-long learning and ongoing research in all areas of pharmacy profession.
Goals
Goal Area 1
Strengthen Curriculum, Teaching and Learning
Goals reflecting pharmacy curriculum content, how that content is delivered, and how its learning is assessed
- Promote innovations that improve pharmacy teaching and curricula, especially in emerging areas such as population health, implementation science, pharmacogenomics, informatics, digital health, and interprofessional education
- Disseminate innovations widely to AACP members, and support the use, replication and evaluation of models, best practices, resources, and tools from projects related to the curriculum, teaching and learning
- Expand student and faculty awareness of the various roles and career paths available to pharmacists
- Stimulate pharmacy schools’ delivery of collaborative practice and patient-care experiences to students along with schools’ expansion of interprofessional practices within their geography of influence
- Integrate into curriculum the importance of and ways for collaborating with state/national pharmacy associations and other stakeholders to improve patient care, promote health equity and test new payment models via advocacy
Goal Area 2
Expand Bridges between Education and Practice
Goals aligning and accelerating the transitions from education (across the full continuum of education) to pharmacy practice
- Assess and implement promising innovations in pharmacy education and residency to better align curricula with experiential and post-grad training to ensure graduates are ready to contribute to interprofessional team-based care
- Stimulate pharmacy schools’ delivery of collaborative practice and patient-care experiences, along with schools’ expansion of interprofessional practices within their geography of influence
- Catalyze pharmacy schools’ efforts to partner with pharmacy and medical societies to advance collaborative practice
- Disseminate innovations widely to AACP members, and support the use, replication and evaluation of, models, best practices, resources and tools from projects related to bridging education and practice
- Determine if experiential education formats and accreditation standards for the PharmD curriculum and postgraduate training need to be simplified, reformed and/or made customizable to the student’s career pathway
- Convene the leaders in pharmacy practice transformation to share projects, products and lessons-learned related to bridging education to practice
Goal Area 3
Reinforce Workforce Readiness and Optimization
Goals to develop and sustain a pharmacy workforce that fully engages in valued contributions to the health-care system
- Promote the recognition and value of the roles and contributions of pharmacists in improving patient care and public health to payors, other health-care providers, policymakers, patients and caregivers
- Increase the number of pharmacists providing chronic care management, comprehensive medication management, and other pharmacist-care services as part of an interprofessional care team
- Collaborate with state and national pharmacy associations and other stakeholders to improve patient care, promote health equity, and test new payment models through advocacy
- Convene leaders in pharmacy practice transformation to share projects and lessons-learned on accelerating workforce readiness and mobilization
- Recommend new approaches to pharmacists’ continuous professional development programs
- Cultivate and sustain a diverse workforce serving a diverse patient population
- Cultivate, sustain, and accelerate the development of a workforce of “change agents” and leaders
- Disseminate innovations widely to AACP members, and support the use, replication and evaluation of, models, best practices, resources and tools from projects related to pharmacy workforce readiness and mobilization
Executive Director, AACP Transformation Center
AACP has selected Melissa Murer Corrigan, R.Ph., CAE, FAPhA, FASHP as the Executive Director of the AACP Transformation Center.
Over three decades, Melissa has demonstrated remarkable leadership abilities both inside and outside the profession of pharmacy. After completing an executive residency in association management with the American Pharmacists Association, she spearheaded the 1992 national Scope of Pharmacy Practice Project, which was notable for including the first scope of practice assessment for pharmacy technicians. Subsequently, she was tapped to create the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board (PTCB), which since 1995 has certified over 700,000 pharmacy technicians. After leading PTCB for 17 years and becoming an international leader in certification excellence, Melissa joined ACT in Iowa City in several key roles dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. She joins the AACP staff on November 8, 2021.
ATC will be led by Melissa Murer Corrigan, supported by AACP back-office services, and guided by an Expert Advisory Council that will kick-off this Fall.
Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice (BPEP) Summit
The BPEP Summit was the first major initiative for the ATC hosted on June 2–3, 2022 at six regional campuses across the country. The summit was planned collaboratively with six other national organizations closely connected to pharmacy education and post-graduate training and credentialing, including the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP), Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP), American Pharmacists Association (APhA), American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), and the Board of Pharmacy Specialties (BPS).
The purpose of the BPEP Summit was to achieve consensus and provide action-oriented recommendations that addressed two major questions:
- What does pharmacy workforce optimization look like?
- To get to an optimized pharmacy workforce, what is needed, what changes are required in the following areas?
- PharmD education
- Professional identity formation
- Post-graduate education and training
- Continuing professional development (CPD)
Definition of Optimized Pharmacy Workforce: A sufficient supply of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, pharmacy residents, student pharmacists and other pharmacy support personnel in patient-centered, team-based healthcare settings able to practice at the top of their education, license/registration, and scope of practice to ensure that patients achieve optimal health medication outcomes in an environment that promotes pharmacists' well-being.
A total of 300 participants engaged in strategic analysis and planning around four topics:
- Competency-based Pharmacy Education
- Professional Identity Formation
- Optimizing the Continuum of Learning: PharmD through Post-graduate Education
- Pharmacists’ Continuing Professional Development and Life-long Learning
Post-BPEP Summit Proceedings
Attendees engaged in robust discussions around the four topics listed above. Each topic had a keynote presentation and a reactor panel, followed by breakout sessions.
A week following the BPEP Summit, a commentary "The Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice Summit: A Unique Convening with Purpose" was published in AJPE. This commentary provides a brief overview of this extraordinary summit and the events that led up to it. It is not often that a group of health executives, educators, and professionals gather with the goal of identifying a preferred future for their profession and the patients they serve. It is even more rare when such an assembly results in a clear and actionable plan to follow to achieve that desired future. Nevertheless, the BPEP Summit, an unprecedented collaborative event in June 2022 that involved six sites across the country and more than 300 participants, was just such a convening.
AACP worked with a graphic recorder, Jo Byrne, to create a visual map of the BPEP Summit, highlighting the purpose and conversations that took place around the four topics as well as the importance of interprofessional collaboration, adaptability and inclusivity.
The takeaways from the breakout session groups were recast as recommendations and a web-based survey was created. This survey was sent to attendees asking to rank these recommendations based on the most significant impact it would have on enhancing pharmacy’s capacity to improve health outcomes for all people over the next five years.
The BPEP Summit summary article will be published in AJPE this Fall. This summary provides an overview of the sessions that took place during the two days, pre-summit and post-summit survey results as well as next steps of the AACP Transformation Center.
Please visit the Bridging Pharmacy Education and Practice Summit page to view all of these proceedings.