To celebrate National Pharmacist Day, the UC Irvine School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences organized a presentation for first-year student pharmacists featuring Jonathan Watanabe, PharmD, PhD, associate dean of pharmacy assessment and quality and professor of clinical pharmacy.
National Pharmacist Day is celebrated annually on January 12, offering a day to commemorate the positive impacts pharmacists make in patients’ lives every day.
Watanabe covered a range of topics, including a pharmacist’s impact on health policy, the role pharmacists play in healthcare teams with their extensive knowledge of pharmacology, and how pharmacists stepped up nationwide to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Watanabe also spoke about his participation in a White House-sponsored committee on improving access to methadone to treat opioid use disorder. He has contributed to three National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine consensus studies, provided briefings to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, United States Senate Finance, Appropriations, House Ways and Means, Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, House Energy and Commerce Committee, and briefings to the United States House of Representatives Appropriations Committee Staff on the implications of discarded medications and steps to take to reduce wasted medications. He currently serves on the Task Force of the California Health Benefits Review Program.
The role of the pharmacist is continuously evolving beyond dispensing medication to addressing the increased intricacy and cost of supporting the wellness of the country’s aging and diverse population. There is a growing demand for pharmacists to have direct patient interaction in settings such as medical clinics and offices, hospital ambulatory sites, and community clinics.
Pharmacists work in nearly every healthcare environment, including retail, hospitals, specialty pharmacy, and more. The profession is also growing, with an expected 2% growth between 2021 and 2031, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
What makes UCI’s PharmD program unique?
- A strong foundation of pharmaceutical sciences, biomedical sciences, and clinical sciences integrated throughout the curriculum
- Interprofessional education within the Susan & Henry Samueli College of Health Sciences
- Rigorous clinical training at UCI’s academic medical center to ensure graduates are ready to work in interprofessional teams
- Integrative health approach to treating the whole patient with a wide range of preventive and treatment modalities
- Committed to serving under-represented populations and advancing healthcare equity
