New Walgreens Program Aims to Enable Pharmacy Technicians to Pursue PharmD Degrees

In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Rick Gates, chief pharmacy officer at Walgreens, discusses the company’s new PharmStart initiative. Gates said the initiative is intended to address 3 key barriers that prevent pharmacy technicians from pursuing pharmacy school: financial barriers, understanding the prerequisites, and finding work/life balance.

Pharmacy Times: Can you explain the basics of how the PharmStart program will work?

Rick Gates: Yeah, PharmStart is a program; it's really a first-of-a-kind program to help our technicians in our stores really understand prerequisites for pharmacy school and help them get those prerequisites accomplished in a tuition-free way. And so, it's a partnership, really, to help build that pool, if you will, of talent within our stores to get into the pharmacy profession. It's in partnership with Guild, which is helping us really make an easy way for our technicians to engage in the platform. It's got a lot of flexibility for them as well, which is, I know, one of the challenges they have, and I think we're really trying to get the next generation of pharmacists excited to get into the profession.

Pharmacy Times: How did you identify the need for this type of program?

Gates: Yeah, this all started with the Pharmacy Dean's Advisory Forum that we launched just over a year ago. You know, we're working in partnership with 17 deans across the country and really understanding the challenges that they're having, not only from enrollment in schools, but what [challenges] we're having getting the right types of talent into our stores. So, one of the things that we did is we did a survey of our technicians, and the number 1 thing that they said is 75% of them would go to pharmacy school if they actually could. And they identified some barriers to getting into pharmacy school, one being understanding: do they have the prerequisites to get into pharmacy school? The second being a financial barrier, and the third being a balance of work/life. And so, you know, all those things really came out of the survey, which really helped us start to frame out PharmStart.

Pharmacy Times: Can you elaborate on the common barriers for those looking to pursue pharmacy school?

Gates: You know, in the survey that we did with our technicians, I think that they were excited to go into pharmacy school, but I think the 3 barriers were, you know, cost, right? So obviously, cost is going to be a barrier to pharmacy school itself for the PharmD programs, and we have programs that we've kind of addressed that with. The second one was actually prerequisites and understanding. Do they actually meet the requirements to get into pharmacy school? And that's where PharmStart really comes in to help individualize the prerequisite understanding for each individual, help them actually have a customized way to get their prerequisites done, and it's funded on behalf of them, which does take down the cost burden. And the third thing that they said is they want to really have a work/life balance. And so, I think the beauty of PharmStart is it does actually help them, because they can start any Monday that they want that's convenient to them to start the coursework, and it's not a rigid semester-based program like you have with most coursework that's out there. So, PharmStart really addresses multiple barriers that they had to getting into pharmacy school.

Pharmacy Times: What sort of response have you seen from technicians?

Gates: Yeah, you know, the response, quite honestly, has been overwhelmingly positive. We launched it in 6 states, we've opened it up to about 300 candidates at this point in time, and we launched it over all of our internal social media, if you will. And most of the questions are, “When is it coming to my state?” And so, I think that there's a lot of excitement, because people are saying, “I want to go into pharmacy school. I just had barriers to get there.” And I think we're excited to really help, really see the engagement with how many people get into the program, and then go from there. But it's been really overwhelmingly positive, and people really want to enroll.

Pharmacy Times: What other initiatives has Walgreens introduced for aspiring pharmacists?

Gates: PharmStart is really 1 of 3 things that we've launched over time, so obviously this is helping with prerequisites, taking the burden down to get into pharmacy school. The second is the burden of the cost of the PharmD programs that are out there. So, we do have what's called a Pharmacy Educational Assistance Program, which can give up to about $40,000 to really help pay for pharmacy school for those that are actually enrolled. And obviously we have them generally working in our stores and then going into pharmacy school, so we're supporting them in multiple ways as they go through that pharmacy journey. And the last one is, once you get out of pharmacy school, we actually have a 401K match program, because a lot of times you're paying back your school loans, and they can't actually invest in their 401K. So, what we do is we say, you know, pay back your loans, we're going to help you on the first 4% of your 401K match, or we're going to actually invest that for you. So, they can start to actually save for their future as well. So, we’re really trying to come at it from multiple angles to support our pharmacists and potential pharmacists.

Pharmacy Times: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Gates: You know, I can just tell you from personal experience—I'm a pharmacist. I worked in our stores for 8 years, and the best pharmacists I worked side by side with, a lot of them were actually technicians in our stores. And so, when I look back at it now, we think about how we get the next generation of pharmacists. We've got to tap our own talent, and so that's why I'm really excited about going to our technicians that want to go into pharmacy school and saying, “How can we help you?” And so that's why I think PharmStart is such an amazing program for us, and I think why we're getting such a positive reaction, because they are going to be absolutely amazing pharmacists for us and really help drive the next generation of leadership to drive the profession.