DEERFIELD, Ill. — As part of a partnership unveiled this past summer, Walgreen Co. has officially opened a new store near the Johns Hopkins East Baltimore medical campus.
Walgreens said Friday that store project is a joint effort to bring new health and wellness programs and other health care services to the community, furthering the partnership between Johns Hopkins and Walgreens to explore the development of new models for improving overall patient care.
"This store is an ideal environment for our pharmacists and the Healthcare Clinic nurse practitioners to work with Johns Hopkins Medicine faculty to further innovate in health care while providing greater access to services for the community," Kermit Crawford, Walgreens’ president of pharmacy, health and wellness, said in a statement. "We’re proud of the great work that’s being done through this unique collaboration that led to this store’s opening as a model of our partnership to help students, staff and area residents get, stay and live well.”
Sporting Walgreens’ Well Experience format, the new store offers health services as well as healthy food options and a full selection of other daily living products. In addition to its pharmacy, the store brings other health care resources to the community with a new Healthcare Clinic, staffed by board-certified nurse practitioners, marking the first Walgreens in-store retail clinic in the state of Maryland, Walgreens said.
The store is located at the Science and Technology Park adjacent to the Johns Hopkins medical campus at 900 N. Washington St., Baltimore. New services now available include student health services, Walgreens’ Healthcare Clinic walk-in medical clinic, and chronic disease education and awareness programs. Other programs and services slated to be offered include smoking cessation, HIV testing and travel immunizations.
"These programs will provide a novel approach to population health and medical services," stated Patricia Brown, president of Johns Hopkins HealthCare. "They will benefit not only the surrounding community, but also form the level of health care collaboration that could serve as a national model."
Jeanne Clark, director of the division of general internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, noted that Johns Hopkins has been working with Walgreens for over a year to develop collaborative approaches to population-based research to improve patient health outcomes for patients.
"The opening of the new Walgreens store increases our potential to advance population health in the community and across the country and is a mechanism to expand our relationship with Walgreens," Clark commented.
Walgreens also announced that it will provide the initial funding for the new Brancati Center for the Advancement of Community Care. The center, part of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, will develop and test new models of collaborative care to improve the health of communities using the skills and expertise of a diverse group of clinicians, including pharmacists, nurse practitioners and others.
Plans call for Walgreens and Johns Hopkins to work together toward a goal of raising $10 million to $15 million in contributions over the next five years.
"Pharmacists and nurse practitioners are playing a critical role in health care today, and we share the center’s mission on a local, national and global scale to further the study and development of new health care models that allow these clinicians to practice at the top of their licensure and training while serving as a part of patients’ care teams," stated Harry Leider, Walgreens’ chief medical officer.
