Three local universities want to launch pharmacy schools here, and they would join six others in Southern California and a total cadre of 11 statewide.
An aging population and changes in technology, regulation and medical practice are driving the expansion.
Orange-based Chapman University’s pharmacy school earned “pre-candidate” professional accreditation from the Chicago-based Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education last month. It plans to enroll 60 students this fall, 80 next year, and 100 each fall thereafter at roughly $90 million Irvine Spectrum-area health sciences campus.
Ketchum, UCI, West Coast
Marshall B. Ketchum University in Fullerton has committed $11 million to put its pharmacy program on the map in north Orange County. In January, it also paid $10.3 million for an 88,000-square foot building in Anaheim to grow all its health sciences programs and make room for the pharmacy school, which plans to enroll 52 students in fall 2016.
The University of California-Irvine is in the earliest planning stages of a pharmacy program. West Coast University in Irvine, meanwhile, enrolled its first 42 pharmacy students in August at a Los Angeles campus.
Taken together, the schools with programs seek to have more than 600 students training as pharmacists within four years.
Chapman President James Doti said at the end of February that the university may also add a program in osteopathic medicine at the health sciences campus—but the precandidate status for a pharmacy school is its most immediate development.
Ron Jordan, the founding dean of Chapman’s School of Pharmacy, said it indicates progress in the development of the program, which has gotten an investment of $3 million in lab equipment.
Accreditation
Pharmacy schools can enroll students without accreditation, but approvals from professional accreditors is generally taken to mean the school is on the right track.
The accreditation council said precandidate status means a school has accounted for its standards with “reasonable assurance” of progress to full accreditation.
Ketchum said it expects its first formal accreditation visit in April as it also seeks precandidate status.
“We had ACPE out in September,” said Dr. Robert Rosenow, founding dean of Ketchum’s pharmacy school. The visit was “not required, but we wanted them to get to know us.”
UC Irvine is in the early planning stages of a program—which requires approval from campus committees, its medical school, and the UC system before it can start to produce practicing pharmacists.
“We have most of what we need [academically],” said Richard Chamberlin, chair of UCI’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The department currently offers undergraduate degrees and a research-oriented Ph.D. to about 800 students.
Representatives of Chapman, Ketchum and UCI each cited changes in healthcare demand and delivery as reasons for starting pharmacy schools. They’re jumping into an established field, with six others already spread over the Southern California counties of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego.
Expanded Roles
Chapman’s Jordan said national healthcare goals that include “more prevention, better care and lower costs” will drive pharmacy schools to educate “advanced practice” pharmacists who do more than just dispense drugs.
Ketchum’s Rosenow cited the expanded roles pharmacists are expected to play in future delivery of healthcare services.
“It’s the direction the pharmacy profession is going,” he said.
The deans said their schools are designed around this “inter-professional education”—meaning that more and more medical providers are called on to work together, and medical education is changing to meet that need.
“This is huge,” Jordan said. “Healthcare is changing.”
He described a “cradle-to-grave” approach in medicine—from vaccines for children to “end-of-life” treatments of elderly patients—that is pushing pharmacy schools to craft programs where students work together across disciplines to cultivate a “continuum of care.”
Programs
The three Orange County universities have no shortage of programs that could link to pharmacy studies.
Chapman and Ketchum recently launched physician assistant programs.
UCI has its medical school, Chapman is considering osteopathic medicine, and Ketchum has taught optometry for more than 110 years.
Chapman also offers a master’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences.
“It’s a scientific foundation for practicing pharmacists that can produce both basic scientists and clinicians,” Jordan said.
