This week on Race to Value, we are excited to celebrate Pharmacy Week – it is a time to recognize the invaluable contributions pharmacists and technicians make to patient care in hospitals, outpatient clinics, and other healthcare settings, and to raise patients’ and colleagues’ awareness about the vital role pharmacists play on the healthcare team. Our guests this week are mavens in aligning pharmacy and value-based care. In this episode, we discuss the importance of women in leadership, the impact of drug prices on minoritized communities, vaccine equity, the relationship between SDOH and medication adherence, pharmacy integration, and vaccine science and effectiveness research.

Melissa Murer Corrigan was founding Executive Director and CEO of the Pharmacy Technician Certification Board (PTCB) in Washington, D.C. from 1994-2011. Melissa’s leadership launched the PTCB program that has now certified over 600,000 pharmacy technicians working across the United States. Murer Corrigan embraced ambition, took risks, and was the only woman on the PTCB Board of Governors during her 17-year tenure as CEO.

In 2012 Melissa joined the ACT as Vice President of Social Impact and sits on the Board of Directors for the American Institute for the History of Pharmacy. Melissa has served as adjunct faculty with the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy since 2013. She has been named a Fellow of both the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Association and the American Pharmacists Association.

Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir, also known as “JAM,. is an Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice at Loma Linda University, School of Pharmacy and a Critical Care Infectious Disease pharmacist, and an Infectious Disease Pharmacokinetics/ Pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) Research Fellow at Wayne State University under the tutelage of Dr. Michael J. Rybak PharmD, MPH, PhD. Her dedication to improving public health has been recognized by the United States Public Health Services, as she was the 2017 recipient of the USPHS Outstanding Service Award. Additionally, her research has led her to be recognized by the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases one of their 30 under 30 outstanding young scientists, for their ECCMID 2021 31st annual meeting.