College of Pharmacy’s New Ambulatory Care Program Aims to Make Tennessee Communities Healthier

As the first two fellows in the College of Pharmacy's academic and ambulatory care program, Tabitha House, PharmD, left, and Taylor Littlejohn, PharmD, center, care for patients while learning aspects of being a pharmacy faculty member.

Tabitha House, PharmD, worked as a high school science teacher before going back to school to study pharmacy. Through a new fellowship program in the UT Health Science Center College of Pharmacy, she can return to teaching while also caring for patients.

Dr. House is one of two recent College of Pharmacy alumni in the college's new Academic and Ambulatory Care Postdoctoral Fellowship. The program launched this year to better serve patients and address the shortage of primary care pharmacists in Tennessee in two main ways.

"The goal is to develop primary care pharmacists who know how to start their own clinics and are already credentialed with insurance to bill for that in the state of Tennessee," said Ashley Ellis, PharmD, MBA, assistant dean for Strategic Partnerships and Innovation. "They can also become faculty members because they know how to teach and inspire students to go work in primary care, and that's where the shortage is in the state of Tennessee."

Dean Reginald Frye began the initiative to give the college a larger presence in the primary care field and provide another option for new graduates. Dr. Ellis was tasked with building the program through a partnership with Christ Community Health Services, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) with more than a dozen clinical sites in Memphis and Jackson.

Christ Community Health Services' clinical pharmacist Nicole Northcutt, PharmD, far left, and clinical pharmacy program manager Alex Johnson, PharmD, far right, serve as preceptors for fellows in the ambulatory care program.

"I view this fellowship as a way to bridge the gap between the academic space and underserved population work for direct patient care in a primary care setting," said Alex Johnson, PharmD, clinical pharmacy program manager at Christ Community. "This fellowship allows for fantastic exposure to diverse patient populations spanning multiple communities that are equally deserving of medical quality care. Through this experience and postgraduate training, we are empowering future clinicians in the practice area to serve the communities they live in and to educate students about the patients they will be taking care of."

The fellows work under preceptors at Christ Community to provide direct care and medication management for traditionally underserved patients with various disease states including diabetes, hypertension, and HIV. Taylor Littlejohn, PharmD, a 2023 graduate of the College of Pharmacy, said the work of ambulatory care pharmacists bridges gaps in patient care.

"One example of what we do is, if a patient is discharged from a hospital with a diagnosis of heart failure, one of the key pillars of treatment is titration of guideline-directed medical therapy, and we're able to see patients in that critical two-week follow-up to titrate up their medications as directed by the guidelines," Dr. Littlejohn said. "Patients often may not be able to be seen by their primary care provider within maybe four to six weeks, so we're able to bridge those gaps."

Dr. Littlejohn completed one year of residency in acute care at the Lt. Col. Luke Weathers, Jr. (Memphis) VA Medical Center before starting the ambulatory care program. Growing up in Memphis, he has always wanted to be in the health care field to help make a difference in the lives of patients. When he learned the college's new fellowship would include training in both primary care and academia, he thought it was the perfect fit for his second postgraduate year.

"I learned that this was a majority clinical experience, and that was super exciting to me, because I think the core of my identity is that I love patient care," he said. "However, I do really enjoy teaching, and getting to dive deep into both of those things simultaneously will really allow me to grow as both a practitioner and a teacher."

Dr. House was also drawn to the teaching aspect of the fellowship. She has a master's degree in education and taught high school biomedical and environmental science in Arkansas for three years. However, she felt unfulfilled working only in a classroom and realized she wanted to further her education in a science field. She attended the College of Pharmacy and completed the three-year program in May. She applied for the ambulatory care program so she could combine her passions for science and teaching.

"I have already had opportunities to work with pharmacy students and to facilitate active learning sessions to help them understand the material better," she said. "I'm also able to sit in on committees and do small projects to help revamp the curriculum, so I'm learning a lot about what goes on behind the scenes in academia."

While she has enjoyed the familiarity of working with students, Dr. House has found interacting with her patients to be the most rewarding part of the fellowship. She said she receives gratification from taking time to learn about not only her patients' medications, but also their lives and the factors that might be impacting their disease states.

"Before starting this program, I had other clinical experiences, but ambulatory care has given me the opportunity to stay connected to my patients for a longer period of time," she said.

The College of Pharmacy is planning to increase its impact through ambulatory care across the state by starting fellowship programs at its campuses in Nashville and Knoxville. The college is recruiting fellows to work at HOPE Family Health in Westmoreland, near Nashville, and at Cherokee Health Systems in Knoxville. According to Dr. Ellis, expanding across Tennessee can improve the health of communities statewide.

"What we've seen is that quality metrics are improved once you have a clinical pharmacist working in a community. Those can be things like blood pressure, immunizations, diabetes, etc. And so, I expect for those things to continue to improve as we have more pharmacists who are trained and available to work in those clinics," she said. "In this way, our Ambulatory Care Program aligns with the vision of our chancellor and the university - Healthy Tennesseans. Thriving Communities. - which means everything we do is to help make Tennessee healthier."

Both Dr. Littlejohn and Dr. House take pride in the impact this fellowship program is allowing them to have on the patients they treat now and on the patients their students will care for in the future. "We are allowing clinical pharmacy to increase its presence within the community and to help bridge the gap in healthcare disparities by seeing patients more frequently and supporting fellow health care providers in providing care in a timely and extensive manner," Dr. Littlejohn said.

"UT Health Science Center is really good at training pharmacists to look at patients as a whole person, and not just their disease state," Dr. House said. "So, the community is getting the benefits of having more and more caring and thoughtful pharmacists who can help them live healthier lives."

The College of Pharmacy is currently recruiting for the two-year Academic and Ambulatory Care Postdoctoral Fellowship. Recent pharmacy graduates seeking hands-on experience in teaching, patient care, research, and service are encouraged to apply by the December 31 deadline. For more information, visit the program's website.

This story was initially published in the Fall 2024 issue of the College of Pharmacy Magazine.

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