Adam Bress

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) has selected three outstanding health professionals for NAM fellowships. Dr. Adam Bress has been named the 2020–2022 NAM Pharmacy Fellow. The fellows were chosen on the basis of their professional qualifications, reputations as scholars, professional accomplishments, and relevance of current field expertise to the work of the NAM and the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). They will collaborate with eminent researchers, policy experts, and clinicians from across the country during their 2-year fellowship. In addition, they will help facilitate initiatives convened by the National Academies to provide nonpartisan, scientific, and evidence-based guidance to national, state, and local policy-makers; academic leaders; health care administrators; and the public.

Bress is currently an associate professor of population health sciences with tenure in the Division of Health System Innovation and Research and an investigator at the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System. He is a formally trained cardiovascular clinical pharmacist and population scientist. In 2018, Bress received the ACCP New Investigator Award. His research is focused on preventing and treating cardiovascular disease, optimizing medication use, and reducing health disparities. He is particularly interested in studying antihypertensive medication use, responses, and outcomes to help patients and providers, as well as health systems, payers, governments, and population health managers, make better decisions about how to treat and control high blood pressure. He is also interested in genetic ancestry and racial/ethnic differences in antihypertensive medication responses.

The NAM Fellowship in Pharmacy program enables talented, early-career health policy or health science clinicians and scholars to participate actively in the work of the NAM and further their careers as future leaders in the field. When asked what he hopes to gain from this unique experience, Bress expressed his enthusiasm for the work ahead:

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to form new collaborations with leaders and groups that I would not have access to previously and leverage these opportunities to forward socially conscious strategies for optimizing medication use and health equity specifically in cardiovascular disease.

Bress is the fifth fellow to be selected to this NAM program, following previous fellows:

• 2012–2014 Samuel Johnson, Pharm.D., FCCP, BCPS*
• 2014–2016 Steven Smith, Pharm.D., MPH, BCPS*
• 2016–2018 Jonathan Watanabe, Pharm.D., M.S., Ph.D., BCGP
• 2018–2020 Dima Qato, Pharm.D., MPH, Ph.D.

“Being selected as the 2020 NAM Fellow in Pharmacy is one of the greatest honors and opportunities to serve in my professional career,” said Bress. For more information on the NAM Fellowship in Pharmacy, visit https://nam.edu/programs/health-policy-educational-programs-and-fellowships/nam-fellowship-program/nam-fellowship-in-pharmacy/.