VALLEY FORGE, Pa. — AmerisourceBergen and its Good Neighbor Pharmacy franchise network have extended their support of university pharmacy programs nationwide.
The company said Wednesday that in recent weeks it has agreed to fund several educational programs and scholarships for pharmacy students, bringing the total support over the last several years to more than $2 million.
For instance, the University of Florida College of Pharmacy (Gainesville, Fla.) received a five-year commitment from AmerisourceBergen to help endow a program to engage and encourage business ownership in retail pharmacy.
Part of the initiative, which works jointly with the college of business, includes the development of an internship program for pharmacy students to study with a practicing independent store owner, according to AmerisourceBergen. The pharmacist also will mentor the student in local networks, so that the student understands the impact that pharmacists have in their community.
In addition, the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., has established the Good Neighbor Pharmacy Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurial Pharmacy Practice. The campaign goal for the endowment has been reached, and the next step for the program is the hiring of the faculty chairman in early 2011, AmerisourceBergen said. The new chairman’s role will be to execute a comprehensive program of study embedded within the PharmD curriculum. The program is designed to train and educate student pharmacists who are interested in pursuing a career in private pharmacy practice.
"AmerisourceBergen is committed to supporting the practice of community pharmacy. Community-based pharmacists are critical members of the evolving U.S. health care system and the most accessible professional of the patient’s health care team," AmerisourceBergen president and chief executive officer Dave Yost said in a statement. "We are pleased to encourage students to consider community pharmacy and retail entrepreneurship and to continue this tradition of supportive health care."
The pharmacy distributor added that the Northern Ohio University (Ada, Ohio), Lipscomb University (Nashville, Tenn.), University of Missouri (Kansas City, Mo.) and University of Toledo (Toledo, Ohio) recently established Good Neighbor Pharmacy scholarship programs for students seeking a career in community pharmacy. The scholarship programs, funded by AmerisourceBergen and Good Neighbor Pharmacy, are the latest additions to programs already established at Western University of Health Sciences (Pomona, Calif.), University of Southern California (Los Angeles), Loma Linda University (Loma Linda, Calif.), Texas Tech University (Dallas), East Tennessee State University (Johnson City, Tenn.), University of Texas (Austin, Texas) and other institutions.
AmerisourceBergen’s Good Neighbor Pharmacy network encompasses more than 3,700 independent pharmacies in the United States and Puerto Rico.
