“Excellence Unveiled at UNC with Chancellor Lee Roberts” is a series on 97.9 The Hill and Chapelboro.com sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Each episode shines a light on members of the Carolina community and the outstanding work they do. Listen to the full episode below, or read the complete transcript.
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In the seventh installment of Excellence Unveiled, listen to Angela Kashuba, dean of the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, talk about her research, rural initiatives and leading the No. 1 pharmacy school in the nation. Kashuba has been part of UNC since 1997, and her work as dean of the Eshelman School of Pharmacy has helped keep UNC at the forefront of both research and practical implementation.
I first have to say that I have the honor of leading the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, which has been ranked the No. 1 pharmacy school in the nation since 2016. And I’ve worked at the pharmacy school for 28 years. I was really attracted to UNC because of the collaborative environment here, and I’ve stayed here because this is a truly special place.
But I think there are really three things that make the pharmacy school No. 1. So, in terms of our people, we really have an incredible community of faculty, staff, students, alums and partners who are really committed to excellence and to making an impact. Our faculty, alums and students are partnering across health professions to shape the future of pharmacy so that pharmacists really remain the front door of health to their communities. Our educational enterprise is second to none. We have a wonderful group of faculty who lead our Vanguard Doctor of Pharmacy curriculum, which features significantly active learning and prioritizes experiential education. Third, our research enterprise spans the drug development cycle from drug discovery through to population health.
I have an amazing lab, and I really stand on the shoulders of giants. So my faculty and staff scientists are just truly amazing, and we’ve been together for a really long time, and that’s one of my happy places on campus. We’re focused on developing and optimizing medications for HIV treatment, prevention and now cure. My lab also has a core facility that we run for the UNC Center for AIDS Research. And so we help up to 80 investigators a year on their science, so from investigators at UNC to those across the nation and also around the globe. We help them with writing grants, with study designs, analyzing samples, analyzing data, helping interpret that data and publication. It’s a really special group to me.
You know, I am really proud of our No. 1 status nationally, but I think I’m even more proud of the fact that we’re the only public pharmacy school in North Carolina. And it was so important to me when I became dean to ensure that we were focusing our efforts on the people and communities of North Carolina. What’s wonderful is that pharmacists are uniquely positioned to help address our state’s health workforce needs and to develop team-based care and value-based care for rural and underserved communities. And this is particularly important because our state has over 3.5 million rural North Carolinians who have increased risk for chronic conditions and have lower life expectancies, so there’s a lot of gaps out there in health care that pharmacists can help fill.
Over 70% of our alums live in North Carolina and serve the entire state, so we are very focused on continuing to be a workforce engine to impact the health and economics of North Carolina. We’ve really been focusing recently on the AHEC model of recruit, train and retain, using that strategy to build the rural pharmacy workforce our state needs.
So let me go through each one of those. So for recruiting, we’ve spent the last few years in really concerted youth outreach in North Carolina, in rural communities in particular, in partnerships with local high schools, with community colleges, universities, pharmacies and nonprofits to ensure that our North Carolina youth know that we want them here, because sometimes it’s intimidating as a No. 1 school nationally to think of themselves here. And we want to help them explore more than a hundred different careers that they can do with a Doctor of Pharmacy degree. We’ve also established early assurance partnerships with nine other UNC System schools statewide, which helps our undergrads fast-track into our program. And we’ve also revamped our scholarship program with a very strategic focus on supporting North Carolina youth.
(image via UNC)
Click here to learn more about the Eshelman School of Pharmacy
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