Empowering Pharmacists in the Management of Patients With Urothelial Cancer
September 1st 2025Sherry Vogt, PharmD, BCOP; and Megan Hinkley, PharmD, MBA, BCOP, discuss how pharmacists play a crucial role in managing patients with bladder cancer through treatment selection, patient education, adverse effect monitoring, and the evolving landscape of therapies including traditional chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and antibody-drug conjugates like enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab.
AMCP CEO: Pharmacists’ Communication, Trust-Building Key to Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy
August 31st 2025Susan Cantrell, RPh, MHL, CAE, CEO of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, stresses the importance of listening, empathy, and science-based communication in pharmacists’ efforts to guide patients through vaccine decisions.
Shaping the Future of mCRC: What Matters, What’s Next, and What to Watch
August 28th 2025Panelists discuss how future research in refractory metastatic colorectal cancer must prioritize patient-centered approaches by incorporating patient advocates to understand what patients truly value and care about most, citing the example of rectal cancer where clinicians focus on recurrence risk while patients prioritize ostomy concerns, emphasizing that historically clinical trial design has not adequately asked patients about their priorities, and explaining that staying current with rapidly evolving data requires multidisciplinary strategies including journal clubs with board-certified oncology pharmacists, morning huddle meetings for clinical pearls, pharmacy resident presentations, professional organization memberships like ASCO for daily updates, and increasingly using social media platforms like Twitter as starting points to identify relevant clinical developments before delving deeper into primary literature.
Guidelines vs. Real Life in mCRC: Success Isn't ‘One Size Fits All’
August 28th 2025Panelists discuss how endpoint prioritization in late-line metastatic colorectal cancer therapy differs between providers and patients, with pharmacists focusing primarily on progression-free survival and quality of life since patients frequently ask about living long enough to reach specific life events rather than overall survival statistics, while oncologists balance survival importance with comfort using regimens that have robust response rates and good quality of life even without level-one survival evidence, emphasizing that future research must be patient-centered by incorporating patient advocates and understanding what patients truly value most, as demonstrated by the disconnect between clinician focus on recurrence risk versus patient concerns about ostomy outcomes in rectal cancer, and requiring multidisciplinary approaches to staying current with evolving data through journal clubs, professional organization memberships, and increasingly social media platforms as starting points for identifying relevant clinical developments.
Optimizing Patient Treatment Adherence in CML
August 28th 2025A panelist discusses how pharmacists can significantly improve treatment adherence in chronic myeloid leukemia patients through regular patient touchpoints, adherence monitoring, and personalized strategies that address individual barriers, while emphasizing the importance of incorporating patient preferences and goals into tyrosine kinase inhibitor selection through shared decision-making to optimize long-term therapy success.
Expert: How Walgreens Pharmacists Are Tackling Vaccine Hesitancy, Expanding Coadministration
August 22nd 2025Samantha Picking, PharmD, senior director of immunizations at Walgreens, shares how pharmacy teams are addressing vaccine misinformation, managing coadministration, and supporting test-to-treat services during a complex respiratory season.
Translating Trials to Practice: Defining Clinically Meaningful Benefits in mCRC
August 21st 2025Panelists discuss how the SUNLIGHT trial's success stems from its methodical design with robust single-arm and randomized phase two data that earned NCCN guideline inclusion before the phase three study, comprehensive quality of life data collection, and straightforward methodology, while acknowledging that the absence of consensus definitions for clinically meaningful outcomes in refractory metastatic colorectal cancer forces providers to rely on individual thresholds when evaluating hazard ratios, confidence intervals, and safety profiles, with the additional challenge that different organizational frameworks (ASCO, ESMO) use varying criteria for progression-free survival and overall survival endpoints, making consistent trial interpretation difficult without standardized consensus definitions.
The Pharmacist’s Role in Treatment Evaluation
August 21st 2025A panelist discusses how pharmacists play a critical role in tyrosine kinase inhibitors treatment evaluation by addressing patient concerns about dosing, administration, and drug interactions while helping assess efficacy, safety, and tolerability through their knowledge of treatment guidelines, individual drug profiles, and adverse effect management strategies to optimize therapy selection and monitoring for each patient's specific circumstances and comorbidities.
Aligning Care: Team-Based Approaches and Patient Values
August 21st 2025Panelists discuss how multidisciplinary care for refractory metastatic colorectal cancer involves collaborative decision-making through tumor boards, specialized oral oncology pharmacists for financial assistance and patient support, transitions of care teams, and independent pharmacist-patient conversations that often reveal concerns patients won't share with prescribers, while emphasizing that balancing survival extension with quality of life requires understanding individual patient desires and life goals, incorporating patient values into treatment decisions by assessing their tolerance for side effects and supportive care burden, and recognizing that what's clinically meaningful to providers may differ significantly from what matters most to each individual patient.
Walgreens Enhances Staffing, Operations to Meet 2025 Influenza Vaccine Demand
August 20th 2025Samantha Picking, PharmD, senior director of immunizations at Walgreens, discusses staffing strategies, digital tools, and operational improvements designed to streamline flu vaccination services during the upcoming respiratory season.
Medicaid Payment Cuts: Ripple Effects on Rural Health Care Access and Pharmacy Viability
August 14th 2025Scott A. Soefje, PharmD, MBA, BCOP, FCCP, FHOPA, discusses how Medicaid payment changes could impact rural hospitals and local pharmacies, noting the importance of pharmacists staying involved as the situation develops.
Overcoming Barriers in mCRC: Access, Adherence, and the Patient Voice
August 14th 2025Panelists discuss how common barriers to implementing trifluridine/tipiracil plus bevacizumab combination therapy include complex pill burden management with multiple bottle strengths that can confuse patients during dose reductions, procedural complications requiring bevacizumab holds that patients sometimes fail to disclose in advance, and hypertension management challenges that create patient anxiety about treatment delays, while emphasizing that adherence support strategies include close monitoring with biweekly visits, written dosing calendars, alternative five-day dosing schedules aligned with infusion timing, and incorporating patient-reported outcomes into shared decision-making to optimize treatment success despite these practical barriers.
Smart Sequencing and Real-World Dosing in mCRC
August 14th 2025Panelists discuss how real-world dose adjustment decisions in metastatic colorectal cancer are primarily driven by individual patient factors rather than package insert recommendations, emphasizing the importance of understanding each patient's goals, values, comorbidities, and tolerance thresholds through collaborative multidisciplinary decision-making, since patients frequently ask "how will this make me feel?" and often prioritize quality of life over strict adherence to standard dosing, with the key insight that dose reductions can maximize efficacy by keeping patients on therapy longer rather than causing treatment discontinuation from intolerable toxicities.
Gaps in CML Treatment in Underserved Populations
August 14th 2025A panelist discusses how social determinants of health including low health literacy, economic instability, housing and transportation issues create significant barriers to tyrosine kinase inhibitor adherence and patient engagement in underserved chronic myeloid leukemia populations, leading to higher cancer-related mortality rates, while pharmacists can help bridge these gaps through tailored education, advocacy for assistance programs, and innovative care delivery methods like virtual visits.
Who, When, and How: Navigating Combination Therapies in mCRC
August 7th 2025Panelists discuss how managing common toxicities in combination therapies requires specific strategies including dose reductions and growth factor support for neutropenia with trifluridine/tipiracil, antihypertensive management for blood pressure elevations across different agents, and careful patient selection considering contraindications such as previous pelvic radiation (GI perforation risk), cardiac conditions, anticoagulation therapy (hemorrhage risk), hepatic impairment, advanced age, and complex pill burden management, emphasizing the importance of multidisciplinary care and selecting conscientious patients capable of adhering to precise dosing requirements.