Granting Opportunities for Research and Collaboration in the Practice of Community Pharmacy

Pharmacy Times® interviewed Anne Marie Kondic, PharmD, the executive director of the Community Pharmacy Foundation (CPF), on the grant opportunities CPF has supported to promote research and collaboration in the practice of the community pharmacy.

The discussion included a description of some recently completed grants and recently awarded grants from CPF of note. Specifically, Kondic explained that there are a couple new categories of grants that have emerged that are a little different this past year.

“So, we've had two of note recently, the first one being the ACT Pharmacy Collaborative. So, sort of the home base for that project is the University of Pittsburgh, with Melissa McGivney leading that. That is a partnership with the University of Pittsburgh, as well as with AACP, so the colleges of pharmacy and the academicians. So, that's looking at the partnership of academia and CPESN pharmacies, so AC, and then transformation pharmacy collaborative, so the ACT Pharmacy Collaborative. The intent was to bring together academicians in the state [and] the CPESN pharmacies in the state, with the intention of unifying, mobilizing, and amplifying,” Kondic said.

She explained that bringing these 2 groups together allowed for collaboration opportunities that would not have been possible otherwise.

“Each group has resources and needs, and when they came together and sort of talked about what those were, there were notes all over the flip charts of the potential opportunities to collaborate and advance each other and help each other out,” Kondic said. “Even if it's the simplest of a meeting space or a zoom link in these days and time. If they weren't connected and didn't know that that opportunity was available for each other, it just didn't happen. So, it's brought those 2 groups together.”