Background

I chose to pursue graduate study due to the desire to solve issues that I saw while working as a pharmacist, the desire to learn new skills, and the desire to utilize my creativity with the overall goal of improving healthcare.   

 

I hope to address problems that I encountered while working as a pharmacist.  After graduating with my PharmD degree, I worked as a community pharmacist for three years.  During this time, I enjoyed helping patients, and became very involved in medication therapy management (MTM).  However, I observed multiple healthcare problems, including unaffordability of medications and medical care, fragmented healthcare systems resulting in barriers to addressing potentially inappropriate medications, and inefficiencies in the system for addressing substance abuse problems. Furthermore, although many new laws allow pharmacists to expand their role, little progress has been made.  Indeed, I witnessed a slow uptake of many of these new initiatives in actual practice sites.  This led me to pursue graduate study at Auburn University, where I earned my PhD in Health Outcomes Research and Policy in 2019.  I believe that my creativity and newly acquired research skills can help affect a sustainable change in pharmacy practice and address continuing healthcare problems.