Q&A: Rite Aid Pharmacist Boosts Public Health Through Immunization and Clinical Programs

With an interest in both medicine and mathematics, Adam J. James, PharmD, found his perfect fit in the pharmacy profession. His career trajectory has evolved from traditional pharmacy practice to a leadership position at Rite Aid, where he is at the forefront of innovation in immunization and clinical programs.

As the manager of clinical and immunization programs at Rite Aid, James drives public health forward by “provide [pharmacists] with the ability to give as many vaccines as possible to as many patients as possible.” He also oversees various other programs, including travel health consultations, cold storage monitoring, and HIV prevention initiatives.

James delved into the rewards and challenges of his practice setting in an interview with Drug Topics for American Pharmacists Month. | image credit: candy1812 / stock.adobe.com

One of the most fulfilling aspects of his role is the opportunity to empower Rite Aid's extensive network of pharmacists to improve patient health across the large chain pharmacy.

In his interview with Drug Topics for American Pharmacists Month, James delved into the rewards and challenges of his practice setting, highlighted innovative programs at Rite Aid, and discussed the immense potential for pharmacists to expand their role in patient care.

Drug Topics: What initially drew you to the pharmacy profession, and how has your career path unfolded?

Adam J. James, PharmD: When I first was considering career paths, I knew I wanted to be something medical-related, but I also had a strong draw to math. That was something I really liked to do all through high school. Pharmacy was the perfect fit for me, at least, that's what I thought when I was exploring all the options.

I went to Duquesne University all 6 years of my PharmD program, and I interned at Rite Aid that entire time. I graduated in 2014, and I worked at Rite Aid as a field pharmacist in various roles, as a regular pharmacist staff [member], pharmacist, then a pharmacy manager, and I managed multiple locations up until I joined the clinical services team in 2020. This was around the time when COVID-19 vaccines and testing was coming to be a thing. And so, the clinical team was expanding, as were a lot of clinical teams in retail pharmacy, and I was able to join the team, which was supposed to be a stretch project, but in 2021 I was offered the position that I currently hold now, which is the manager for immunization and clinical programs.

READ MORE: Why Vaccination Uptake is Crucial During the Winter Season

What I do in that role is I primarily focus on making Rite Aid’s immunization program successful. To do this, I maintain policies and procedures for our immunization program, create resources, best practices, continuing education courses, all to help educate our pharmacists so that they're up to date on vaccine recommendations and how to talk to customers about vaccines. I also strategize to help put our pharmacists and our pharmacies in the best position to provide these vaccines, and make sure we're getting as many people protected against vaccine-preventable diseases as possible.

Outside of that main role that I hold, I also manage Rite Aid’s travel health consultation program, our cold storage monitoring program, and our merging pre-exposure prophylaxis [PrEP] and post-exposure prophylaxis [PEP] program. Outside of my career at Rite Aid, I've also worked as a pharmacist at a federal penitentiary, which is a pretty unique experience. I’ve also co-authored 2 pharmacology textbooks for Cengage and DBT Publishing.

Drug Topics: Can you talk about some of the rewards and challenges you face in your practice setting?

James: My current role is super rewarding. It's great to have the privilege to have such a large impact over so many pharmacists and so many patients and, like I mentioned previously, I get to educate all our pharmacists. So, when a recommendation changes, or a new vaccine is available, or if there's a best practice out there that I can share, I'm able to get that information to all the pharmacists at our over 1300 locations. In doing that, I'm able to provide those pharmacists with the ability to give as many vaccines as possible to as many patients as possible. That’s probably the biggest reward, I think, is just having that large scale impact across our footprint.

The biggest challenge, I would say, is I don't really get as much face-to-face interactions with patients, and I don't really get to build the relationships that I used to when I was a pharmacist in a store. Pharmacists are so accessible in terms of other health care providers, and I really liked that, when I was a field pharmacist, I was able to get those personal interactions. Now, I kind of miss being able to have those personal interactions in my current role. But to overcome that, I focus on the positive impact that our immunization program has on public health, on each patient, on all their families—all those things—and use it as motivation to keep continuing to expand the program and make it successful.

Drug Topics: Share something unique about your practice setting, patient population, or a specific program you've implemented that exemplifies the value of pharmacists in patient care.

James: A specific program that we've implemented [is one that] we just kicked off this year. It's our travel health consultation program. We launched it in 3 different states, and we're looking to expand already, but right now it's in California, Washington, and Delaware.

The program, what it's designed to do, is provide people who are traveling to a foreign country, or to a country with altitude or travel risks that they're not used to, with vaccines, prophylactic medication, [and] travel advice, all to make sure that they can have a safe trip wherever they're heading. The pharmacists that are providing this service are trained through a 10-credit continuing education [CE] course that we've created in-house. It's accredited through [the] Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education [ACPE]. I created, I would say, the majority of the content, but I had a lot of contributors from other people on the clinical team and some of the students that I precept for at Duquesne University. Some of the active pharmaceutical ingredient [API] students help contribute as well. So, [the pharmacists] get that extensive training, and then they're prepared to do the program.

Since we've launched that program earlier this year, we've already provided over 1000 travel health consultations, which has obviously resulted in many immunizations, and just ensured that these people who are traveling to a foreign country are able to do so safely and enjoy their time there, as opposed to worrying about their health risks. I think that's kind of cool. It's just something a little different than you'd normally hear about in the community pharmacy setting.

Drug Topics: In your opinion, what are the biggest opportunities for pharmacists to expand their role in patient care in today's health care landscape?

James: Today's health care landscape is, honestly, more unique than it's ever been before. Maybe unique is the wrong word. Maybe I should say it's as progressive as it's ever been before. The biggest opportunity for pharmacists right now to expand their role in patient care is in community pharmacy. And I know that might surprise some people who might be listening. But really, if you think about it,10 to 15 years ago, around the time I was graduating from pharmacy school, or even the 5 years before that, community pharmacists were still looked at [in] primarily dispensing role—the pharmacist dispenses the medication, the doctor prescribes the medication.

[But] since then, we've seen vaccines, medication therapy management—those were super small portions of the pharmacists’ day-to-day role, and now they're the majority of the pharmacists’ day-to-day role, with dispensing being a smaller part. Obviously, we still dispense a lot of medications in community pharmacy, but the clinical services are really where the focus is at. And since that time, 10 to 15 years ago, we've seen our clinical services not only grow in those 2 big [areas], vaccines and medication therapy management, but we've seen exponential growth in other services offered. We’ve seen point-of-care testing, which includes testing and treating for flu, COVID-19, and strep. We’ve seen PrEP and PEP [services]—so that's providing prophylaxis to those who may be exposed to HIV or may have been recently exposed to HIV—travel health consultations, hormonal contraceptive prescribing, and there's just so many more.

Not to mention the vaccines. At this point, pharmacists administer more adult vaccines than any other health care professional. I think I saw somewhere that during the pandemic, over 70% of all COVID-19 doses were administrated in pharmacies. Pharmacists, being one of the most accessible and trusted health care providers, we're providing all these services, and now we have patients that are turning to us as the vaccine experts and someone who they can come to and not just get their medication, but also get some clinical services as well.

My message for pharmacists that are just starting out their careers—I tell all of my students who intern for me or extern for me—pharmacists who once thought that the only type of role they could have was a clinical pharmacist in residency, and now a lot of pharmacists are learning that they can be clinical pharmacists right in their own community pharmacy, and really have an impact on public health and their community. I think that's awesome.

Drug Topics: How do you leverage the resources and support provided by your chain pharmacy to enhance your ability to deliver high-quality, patient-centered care?

James: I'm fortunate to work for a company like Rite Aid, which is very committed to providing our patients with the best clinical care. I have the resources to create, as I sort of alluded to earlier, CE courses. These courses help educate our pharmacists on changing vaccine recommendations, on emerging best practices, on any other clinical services that we can utilize a CE course [for]. A lot of our CE courses are accredited through ACPE, which I think is nice because the pharmacists can earn credit while they're earning credits towards their license.

I also have the resources to implement new and progressive clinical programs that our patients can benefit from. As I mentioned previously, we have the travel health consultations, we have PrEP and PEP, we have point-of-care testing, hormonal contraceptive prescribing, all those things. It's nice to be able to offer the clinical services and organize and maintain these programs with the resources that we have available to us.

And finally, something that we've done recently, has been restructuring a lot of our corporate structure. One of the things that we did was that we created a designated clinical program implementation team, and that team serves to bridge the gap between our clinical services team. As I mentioned before, I'm making policies and procedures, best practices, education, and they bridge that gap between our team and our field team. What they're doing is they're making sure that they're taking that education and those resources that we're providing, and they're taking it directly to our regional pharmacy leaders, directly to our pharmacists, and making sure that they understand the programs are implemented in the way that we are intending them to, so that they can run successfully.

They’re also then taking information from our field pharmacists, from our regional pharmacy leaders, and communicating that feedback back to us and giving us ways that we can improve our clinical programs, getting questions directly to us so we can answer them quickly and efficiently to our teams. So, the [clinical program implementation team] has really been crucial in making sure that our clinical programs have run smoothly over the last, you know, 6 to 8 months. We’ve done a lot of expanding.

Obviously, right now we have our busiest vaccine season, with it being respiratory illness season, so we're doing a lot of flu and COVID-19 and RSV and pneumococcal [vaccines]. So, with our teams administering so many vaccines, it's nice to have that clinical implementation team that provides us direct feedback and that we can then provide guidance [to]. I think that's one of the biggest resources that we have right now that we've leveraged.

To read more, visit our American Pharmacists Month resource center.

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