Joyce Yu-Chia Lee, P. David Rogers, and Sarah P. Shrader have been selected by the College’s Awards Committee to receive ACCP’s prestigious 2021 Clinical Practice Award, Russell R. Miller Award, and Education Award, respectively. In addition, Rogers will be honored as the 2021 Therapeutic Frontiers Lecturer. All three honorees will be recognized during the Awards and Recognition Ceremony at the 2021 Virtual ACCP Member Meeting on Sunday, October 17 (see “2021 ACCP Annual Meeting Offers Virtual and On-Demand Components” elsewhere in this issue).
LeeThe ACCP Clinical Practice Award is given to a College member who has made substantial and outstanding contributions to clinical pharmacy practice. Criteria considered in identifying potential candidates include exceptional leadership in developing innovative clinical pharmacy services and sustained excellence in providing them. Joyce Yu-Chia Lee, Pharm.D., APh, FCCP, BCPS, BCACP, has been a health sciences clinical professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice at the University of California Irvine School of Pharmacy since March 2020. Before that, she practiced in Singapore (2007–2019), most recently as an associate professor of clinical pharmacy at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where she established several ambulatory care and community clinical pharmacy programs, including the first hospital-based pharmacist cardiovascular risk factor management clinic in the country. She has published extensively on the beneficial impact of her services on clinical outcomes and health care costs. After joining the faculty at the University of California – Irvine’s newly established Pharm.D. program, she initiated a comprehensive medication management program for patients at a federally qualified health center. John Paul Gallagher, Pharm.D., B.Sc., MBA, Ph.D., MPSI, professor and deputy head of clinical services in the NUS Department of Pharmacy, highlighted Lee’s practice innovations in his letter of support:
Dr. Lee’s first innovative clinical pharmacy service was at the National Healthcare Group Polyclinics (NHGP), where she established the Hypertension, Diabetes, and Lipids Clinics (HDL-C). This was a significant milestone in the establishment of clinical services in Singapore as it was, at that time, the first primary care multi-disease clinic established in Singapore. There was a need for such clinics locally and regionally, as the prevalence of diabetes in Singapore and SE Asia is significantly higher than in other parts of the world. With this rising diabetes prevalence, the conventional care model commonly found in Asia, where physicians are the sole caregiver who attends to the needs of many patients, is challenged to deliver holistic care. The services that Dr. Lee established were shown to improve clinical and humanistic outcomes and did so on a sustainable basis. The success of these HDL-C continues to be expanded within the NHGP.
Building on the success of these services within polyclinics, Dr. Lee looked to expand services into retail pharmacy. In 2011, Dr. Lee established the Sweet Spot program with Unity Pharmacy (one of the three major retail chains of pharmacies in Singapore) and five years later established the D-Care Program with another one of the retail chains, Watsons. The Sweet Spot program used point-of-care testing, was successfully delivered by community pharmacists trained by Dr. Lee across three sites, and was very positively evaluated by the patients who availed themselves of the services. The D-Care Program, building on the success of Sweet Spot, was a community-based diabetes MTM (medication therapy management) service. This service was established across four sites and was shown to improve transition of care and communication with patients’ health care teams in different health institutions.
Lee was recognized as an ACCP Fellow in 2017 and received the 2018/2019 NUS Faculty Teaching Award in the Faculty of Science as well as the 2017/2018 University Annual Teaching Excellence Award. At the time of her nomination, she had published more than 30 original research publications and written or cowritten over 20 published abstracts or poster presentations.
RogersRussell R. Miller was the founding editor of the College’s journal Pharmacotherapy. The ACCP Russell R. Miller Award is presented in recognition of substantial contributions to the literature of clinical pharmacy, thereby advancing both clinical pharmacy practice and rational pharmacotherapy. P. David Rogers, Pharm.D., Ph.D., FCCP, is chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and professor of pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. His research has focused on improving antifungal pharmacotherapy, studying mechanisms of antifungal drug resistance, and using molecular, genetic, and genomic tools in the study of antifungal agents. At the time of his nomination, he had published more than 120 peer-reviewed manuscripts, including many reporting the results of NIH-funded work. Several of his publications have been highly cited, and he has been invited to present his work at prestigious national and international meetings. Dr. John Bosso, professor emeritus in the colleges of Pharmacy and Medicine at the Medical University of South Carolina, commented on Rogers’ important contributions in advancing health outcomes in his letter of nomination:
Since the time of his fellowship training, Dr. Rogers has demonstrated an interest in and aptitude for research in the infectious diseases arena. He has obviously come to focus his efforts on the area of antifungal drug resistance and has done much to advance our knowledge in this important area. At this point in time, he has become nationally and internationally known for his work that has done so much to improve our knowledge of mechanisms of fungal resistance development.
Dr. Rogers has been at the forefront of bringing new approaches/methodology (in his case, genomics and proteomics) to groundbreaking research in antifungal resistance. Much of this work has centered on azole resistance in which he has discovered and described genetic mutations resulting in azole resistance in various Candida species. This is not simply the discovery of a gene that is associated with phenotypic resistance but also elucidates their transcriptional targets, which in turn code for resistance. He has gone on to learn how various transcriptional profiles and pathways play a central role in antifungal resistance. He is rightfully recognized as a leader in advancing this body of knowledge both nationally and internationally. I would point to his numerous invited lectures in national and international scientific and professional forums as ample evidence of this observation and conclusion.
Nathan Wiederhold, Pharm.D., FCCP, FIDSA, FECMM, professor in the departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Medicine/Infectious Diseases, and Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, noted in his letter of support:
Dr. Rogers joined the faculty at the University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy & University of Tennessee Health Science Center as an Assistant Professor in 2002. He rose rapidly through the faculty ranks, becoming an Associate Professor in 2004, and was promoted to Professor in 2008. During his distinguished tenure at the University of Tennessee, he has also served as the Vice-Chair for Research in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Associate Dean for Translational Medicine for the College of Pharmacy, Director of Clinical and Experimental Therapeutics, and Co-Director and Director of the Center of Excellence for Pediatric Experimental Therapeutics. Most recently, he joined St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and was appointed Chair (Endowed) of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, a very distinguished position. He has also been continuously funded by the NIH since 2000, and as a principal investigator since 2004.
Dr. Rogers is internationally recognized as a leader in the field of antifungal pharmacology and antifungal resistance, as well as the application of genomics and proteomics to this area of research. Through his work and numerous publications, we have gained an increased understanding of the transcriptional regulation involved in antifungal resistance and stress responses in pathogenic fungi. As previously noted, most of this work has focused on the pathogenic yeasts C. albicans, C. glabrata, and the emerging pathogen C. auris. This work has led to the discovery of key transcriptional pathways central to azole antifungal resistance. More recently, his group has begun to take on the challenging pathogen A. fumigatus and mechanisms of resistance to the azoles, the most commonly used antifungals for the treatment of invasive infections caused by this opportunistic mold. Already, they have published observations that are challenging the current dogma that point mutations within CYP51A, the gene which encodes the enzyme targeted by the azoles, are primarily responsible for resistance to this class of antifungals. The discovery of novel mechanisms of resistance has implications not only for future drug development, but also for molecular diagnostic assays for the rapid identification of antifungal resistance. This truly has important implications for therapeutic decision-making.
Rogers serves as a member of the Pharmacotherapy editorial board and has previously received several other prestigious awards and honors, including the ACCP Annual Meeting Best Paper Award, the University of Tennessee Health Science Center Student Government Association Executive Council Excellence in Teaching Award in the College of Graduate Health Sciences, and the 2019 Keynote Lecture at the University of Kentucky Infectious Disease Research Day. He received ACCP Fellow recognition in 2005 and served on the ACCP Board of Trustees from 2010 to 2012. He will also receive this year’s ACCP Therapeutic Frontiers Lecture Award (see below).
ShraderThe ACCP Education Award recognizes an ACCP member who has made substantial and outstanding contributions to clinical pharmacy education at either the professional or postgraduate level. Sarah P. Shrader, Pharm.D., FCCP, BCPS, is a professor with tenure in the Department of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy. She established a new interprofessional education (IPE) program at KU, achieving the support of both the medical and pharmacy programs. Much of her scholarly work focuses on educational programs, specifically IPE. Katie McClendon, Pharm.D., FCCP, BCPS, a clinical associate professor and director of student affairs in the Department of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy, wrote in her letter of support:
Dr. Shrader has demonstrated excellence in both the classroom and the clinical environment. Her current teaching responsibilities at KU include multiple lectures/cases in the Pharmacotherapy course series (for women’s health and ambulatory care topics), as well as coordination of the Clinical Assessment course and the elective Service-Learning Course. She precepts Ambulatory Care APPEs at the Family Medicine/Interprofessional Teaching Clinic as well as an elective APPE in Academia. She also teaches students in other professional programs at KU in a variety of academic environments. She has been recognized with multiple awards for her excellence as an educator, including the South Carolina College of Pharmacy Teacher of the Year award – MUSC Campus (2010); South Carolina College of Pharmacy Teacher of the Year award – MUSC P3 Class (2011); Rho Chi Excellence in Teaching Award – KU SOP Teacher of the Year award (2014); KU SOP Preceptor of the Year award (2014); and Honorable Mention for National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education Nexus, a national IPE award (2018).
Dr. Shrader has an impressive publication and presentation history, and much of it is derived from her innovations in IPE and other educational efforts. Her work in IPE has been funded with grants from institutional funds and external foundations, which is especially impressive to me, given the difficulties with getting funding for the scholarship for teaching and learning. Her role as an educator includes her work to educate practitioners. She has spoken at multiple ACCP meetings on pharmacotherapy topics (typically in women’s health) and at AACP meetings for efforts in education (most often in IPE) and served as a reviewer for ACSAP on “Updates in Contraception” and as an author for PSAP.
At the time of her nomination, Shrader had published over 60 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including 7 book contributions. She has presented extensively at professional and scientific meetings (including ACCP meetings) and served as a member of several ACCP committees/task forces and was recognized as an ACCP Fellow in 2014.
Rogers to Receive 2021 Therapeutic Frontiers Lecture Award
David Rogers was also selected (in 2020) as the recipient of the 2021 ACCP Therapeutics Frontiers Lecture Award. This award recognizes an individual, including ACCP member and nonmember nominees, who has made outstanding contributions to pharmacotherapeutics in his or her field. Among the criteria for this award is the broad acknowledgment that the recipient is currently considered at the leading edge of research in the field. The 2020 ACCP Awards Committee wrote the following in its report to the ACCP Board of Regents:
Dr. Rogers is an international leader in the molecular and genetic basis of antifungal resistance and mycology, who has been continually renewed for R01 funding for over 15 years. He is widely collaborative and has had considerable impact on the development and careers of >50 Ph.D./Pharm.D. students and numerous pharmacists.
Extensive letters of support that were consistent in their description of (Dr. Rogers’) important contribution to mechanisms of azole resistance noted that he is a very successful antifungal researcher with continuous NIH R01 funding since 2000, with grant funding totaling $11.7 million at the time of his nomination. Since 2004, he has been the primary investigator on numerous NIH grants. His work is highly cited, with 17 of his papers having been cited over 100 times. His h-index was 38 (3,500 citations) at the time of his nomination. He has presented more than 180 abstracts and over 80 invited presentations at national and international meetings. He authored a chapter in Goodman and Gilman’s The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics (the “Bible” of pharmacology). He has been on the board of several high-profile organizations including SIDP, the ACCP Research Institute (now the ACCP Foundation), and a permanent member of the NIH Drug Discovery section on antimicrobial resistance. He has mentored multiple graduate students and post-docs, and others (many examples were cited in his letters of support).
Most of his work has centered on azole drug resistance, focusing on genetic and molecular determinants. His work has identified key resistance pathways in Candida and other fungi that were previously unknown. He also leads the Center for Pediatric Experimental Therapeutics, which focuses on anti-infective therapeutics in this population.
Rogers will deliver this year’s Therapeutic Frontiers Lecture, The Emerging Threat of Multidrug-Resistant Fungi, during the Virtual ACCP Member Meeting on Sunday, October 17.
Members of the 2020 ACCP Awards Committee who reviewed and selected the 2021 Therapeutic Frontiers Lecture Award were Mary Amato (chair), Kristi Kelley (vice chair), Jacquelyn Bainbridge, Melody Berg, Kelly Caudle, Alexandre Chan, Lisa Davis, Pramodini Kale-Pradhan, Christina Madison, LeAnn Norris, Chasity Shelton, Michael Thomas, and Kathleen Vest.
Members of the 2021 ACCP Awards Committee who reviewed and evaluated the nominations for this year’s Clinical Practice, Education, and Russell R. Miller awards were Mary Amato (chair), Kristi Kelley (vice chair), Justin Arnall, Jacqueline Bainbridge, David Bright, John Conry, Lisa Davis, Pramodini Kale-Pradhan, Robert Parker, Nancy Shapiro, Chasity Shelton, Mate Soric, Michael Thomas, and Kathleen Vest.