Clinical Pharmacy Practice Welcomes Jonathan Watanabe

Jonathan Watanabe, PharmD, MS, PhD, BCGP will be joining the Department of Clinical Pharmacy Practice as the Associate Director and Founding Associate Dean of Pharmacy Assessment and Quality. Dr. Watanabe will also serve as a Professor of Clinical Pharmacy for the department. His responsibilities will include providing leadership, direction and oversight for the PharmD assessment program. He will also lead in the development, maintenance and evaluation of assessment and accreditation processes for the PharmD program. 

Dr. Watanabe joins us from the University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences where he served as an Associate Clinical Pharmacy Professor earned his BS from the University of Washington, his PharmD from the University of Southern California, and his MS and PhD from the University of Washington Comparative Health Outcomes, Policy, and Economics (CHOICE) Institute. He is a pharmacist, health economist, and outcomes researcher and serves as a Member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Forum on Drug, Discovery, Development, and Translation. Dr. Watanabe has also been involved in methods development for pragmatic clinical trials through the FDA-sponsored Real-World Evidence Series and serves on the steering committee for the Drug Research Development in Older Adults Workshop. Dr. Watanabe applies real-world data to develop policy solutions to improve patient care, bolster population-health, and reduce medical costs. He is currently appointed to the NASEM committee on Implications of Discarded Weight-Based Medications mandated by Congress.  He is a current Scholar in the National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Program.

Dr. Watanabe will join the Department of Clinical Pharmacy Practice in early June and lend his knowledge of pharmacy education and research to the continued development of the planned School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. I am excited to welcome Dr. Watanabe to the leadership team of the planned School.  Please join us in congratulating Dr. Jonathan Watanabe on his new role.