Excellence Unveiled: Angela Kashuba
The dean of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy talks about her research, rural initiatives and leading the No. 1 pharmacy school in the nation.
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Each month, WCHL will feature stories highlighting Carolina excellence from outstanding Tar Heels to share why they’re passionate about their work and shine a light on their important contributions to the community, state and beyond.
Tune in to Excellence Unveiled during morning, noon and evening drive times to hear their stories and find out what ignites their passion for their work. Excellence Unveiled is an exclusive program on WCHL, sponsored by UNC-Chapel Hill. You can listen to WCHL at 97.9 FM or 1360 AM.
Read a transcript of the segment below:
Chancellor Lee H. Roberts: Welcome to Excellence Unveiled, sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I’m Chancellor Lee Roberts, and it’s my pleasure to shine a light on our talented Carolina community and its outstanding work. This month, we feature Angela Kashuba, dean of the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, to talk about her research, rural initiatives and leading the No. 1 pharmacy school in the nation.
Dean Angela Kashuba: I first have to say that I have the honor of leading the Eshelman School of Pharmacy, which has been ranked the No. 1 pharmacy school in the nation since 2016. And I’ve worked at the pharmacy school for 28 years. I was really attracted to UNC because of the collaborative environment here, and I’ve stayed here because this is a truly special place.
But I think there are really three things that make the pharmacy school No. 1. So, in terms of our people, we really have an incredible community of faculty, staff, students, alums and partners who are really committed to excellence and to making an impact. Our faculty, alums and students are partnering across health professions to shape the future of pharmacy so that pharmacists really remain the front door of health to their communities. Our educational enterprise is second to none. We have a wonderful group of faculty who lead our Vanguard Doctor of Pharmacy curriculum, which features significantly active learning and prioritizes experiential education. Third, our research enterprise spans the drug development cycle from drug discovery through to population health.
I have an amazing lab, and I really stand on the shoulders of giants. So my faculty and staff scientists are just truly amazing, and we’ve been together for a really long time, and that’s one of my happy places on campus. We’re focused on developing and optimizing medications for HIV treatment, prevention and now cure. My lab also has a core facility that we run for the UNC Center for AIDS Research. And so we help up to 80 investigators a year on their science, so from investigators at UNC to those across the nation and also around the globe. We help them with writing grants, with study designs, analyzing samples, analyzing data, helping interpret that data and publication. It’s a really special group to me.
You know, I am really proud of our No. 1 status nationally, but I think I’m even more proud of the fact that we’re the only public pharmacy school in North Carolina. And it was so important to me when I became dean to ensure that we were focusing our efforts on the people and communities of North Carolina. What’s wonderful is that pharmacists are uniquely positioned to help address our state’s health workforce needs and to develop team-based care and value-based care for rural and underserved communities. And this is particularly important because our state has over 3.5 million rural North Carolinians who have increased risk for chronic conditions and have lower life expectancies, so there’s a lot of gaps out there in health care that pharmacists can help fill.
Over 70% of our alums live in North Carolina and serve the entire state, so we are very focused on continuing to be a workforce engine to impact the health and economics of North Carolina. We’ve really been focusing recently on the AHEC model of recruit, train and retain, using that strategy to build the rural pharmacy workforce our state needs.
So let me go through each one of those. So for recruiting, we’ve spent the last few years in really concerted youth outreach in North Carolina, in rural communities in particular, in partnerships with local high schools, with community colleges, universities, pharmacies and nonprofits to ensure that our North Carolina youth know that we want them here, because sometimes it’s intimidating as a No. 1 school nationally to think of themselves here. And we want to help them explore more than a hundred different careers that they can do with a Doctor of Pharmacy degree. We’ve also established early assurance partnerships with nine other UNC System schools statewide, which helps our undergrads fast-track into our program. And we’ve also revamped our scholarship program with a very strategic focus on supporting North Carolina youth.
Chancellor Lee H. Roberts: This has been Excellence Unveiled, proudly presented by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
