The Walgreens Deans Advisory Council met for the first time this month, and the stakes could not be higher. Pharmacy school enrollment is down, and burnout among healthcare professionals—pharmacists included—is a very real concern. That’s why Walgreens is taking action, bringing 17 pharmacy school deans together to meet quarterly to discuss how to best support current pharmacists and recruit the next generation.
The two co-chairs who will lead this council are Angela Kashuba, dean of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, and John Colaizzi Jr., vice president of pharmacy practice at Walgreens.
“I've done a lot of things in my 27 years at Walgreens, but this may be the proudest piece of work I've been responsible for,” Colaizzi says. “We are excited to get started.”
Ahead of the inaugural council meeting, Kashuba and Colaizzi spoke about their backgrounds in pharmacy and why they each want to help lead this critical effort.
Angela Kashuba: I am a first-generation college student, and I went to pharmacy school because my mother encouraged me to. She knew I was interested in science and healthcare and had a friend whose brother was a pharmacist. My parents thought this would be a terrific career for me. When I went to the faculty of pharmacy open house at the University of Toronto, I was struck by how engaged and enthusiastic and happy the students were when discussing their experiences and what they hoped to achieve in their careers. I was hooked.
John Colaizzi: I'm a third-generation pharmacist. My father was 17 years old when he started delivering prescriptions for the independent pharmacy owned by my great-uncle in Pittsburgh. He worked at that pharmacy through pharmacy school and pursued a career in academia for over 60 years. He is now retired but served as a Pharmacy Dean at The University of Pittsburgh and Rutgers University.
So, I grew up in this family of pharmacists and was thinking about going to pharmacy school as well. I got a job as a pharmacy tech at Walgreens when I was 17, and I’ve been at the company ever since. I’ve had 13 different roles at Walgreens and celebrated my 27-year anniversary this month.
"I believe we can create change and develop a new national model for community pharmacists that doesn’t leave their education on the table and improves the health of millions of Americans."
AK: Pharmacists are trained in drug therapy and how to optimize medications to achieve excellent patient outcomes. We have so much data showing that when a pharmacist is involved in team-based care, more patients achieve health goals, ER visits are reduced, sick days are reduced, healthcare costs are reduced and the wellbeing of the medical team is improved. But the business model is broken. Pharmacists are the only health professional you can walk in off the street to see and consult with. If asked, they will always spend the time to work with you, but they can’t bill for their time with you. They rely on shrinking or negative drug margins to cover their salaries—this is an unsustainable business model.
We have so many healthcare gaps to fill in this country. And we currently have existing brick and mortar pharmacies that have health professionals in them, which are often the front door to health in their communities. I am co-chairing this council because I believe we can create change and develop a new national model for community pharmacists that doesn’t leave their education on the table and improves the health of millions of Americans.
JC: What happened during the pandemic is that pharmacists got everything they ever wanted at the worst possible time. They were called upon to literally save America, but in many ways, it was to the detriment of pharmacists. Across the healthcare industry, you're seeing physicians, nurses and pharmacists burn out. So that's taken its toll on the workforce, and it's starting to take its toll on pharmacy school enrollment. As a result, everybody in the profession is suffering.
We work internally to get feedback from our pharmacists and look at industry trends to decide what to do, but there's nobody better positioned than pharmacy school deans to help advise us on what the future holds for pharmacy. We set up this council not just for Walgreens, but on behalf of the pharmacy profession. We believe we have a responsibility to the profession to improve job satisfaction for pharmacists and outcomes for the patients we serve. The profession must succeed for Walgreens to succeed.
"We set up this council not just for Walgreens, but on behalf of the pharmacy profession. The profession must succeed for Walgreens to succeed."
AK: My hope is that through this collaboration, we can better align workplace conditions with training to transform the future of community pharmacy on a national scale. We can create real change in pharmacy for the health of our nation. I believe we all have the same goal of providing personalized healthcare to patients. We need a new business model to be able to accomplish this.
JC: While we’ve already publicly stated what some of the council’s objectives are, the most important one for me is elevating community pharmacy as a practice setting of choice. Even when I was in pharmacy school 25 years ago, community pharmacy was something you did when you couldn’t get anything else, and since then, I think that feeling has only gotten worse.
When the public thinks of a pharmacist, they think of a pharmacist in a community practice, the pharmacist they see every month. And we know community pharmacists have an enormous impact on public health outcomes, so I want pharmacists to be proud of practicing in community pharmacy, knowing the impact they have on patient care. So, of the five initial objectives we have, this one is my favorite because it's near and dear to my heart. I’ve lived through it.
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The Council will serve as a sounding board and play a key role in helping Walgreens build upon recent initiatives deployed by the company to reimagine the community pharmacy operating model. Meet the deans participating in the council here.
