Pharma karma | University of New England officials predict the school's new College of Pharmacy will reap broad rewards for Maine's economy
Ten years after a University of New England feasibility study identified that a college of pharmacy in Maine would address a critical shortage of pharmacists in the state, UNE will welcome its first class of pharmacy doctoral students in the fall of 2009 at the university’s Westbrook Campus in Portland.
Though the $12.3 million, 48,000- square-foot College of Pharmacy building won’t be complete until next spring and most of the faculty has yet to be hired, the school received a vote of confidence from the state in mid-August in the form of a $4 million grant from the Maine Technology Asset Fund Awards — the largest grant UNE has ever received.
“The plan we submitted was seen as a significant step for the state of Maine in terms of economic impact,” says College of Pharmacy Dean John Cormier. The college of pharmacy will create opportunities for biomedical research, a field the 2006 Brookings Institution report, “Charting Maine’s Future,” identified as one of the highest-paying technology sectors in Maine.
John Schloss, professor and chairman of UNE’s Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, says the grant has more than just monetary value: The $4 million, coupled with UNE President Danielle Ripich’s ambitious goal to make the pharmacy school one of the nation’s top 25 within a decade, makes UNE more attractive to prospective faculty and research staff.
Last November, Maine voters approved $50 million in bonds to finance companies and research organizations developing new technologies to benefit the Maine economy. Betsy Biemann, president of the Maine Technology Institute, which manages those bonds, says her organization received 66 applications requesting in total more than double what was available from the bonds. In the end, $30 million was awarded to 14 applicants Aug. 11 and the remaining $20 million will be awarded to a second round of applicants this spring. New applicants will be invited to apply later this year.
MTI contracted with the American Association for the Advancement of Science to evaluate the proposals on their quality of science and engineering, economic impact to the state of Maine and the overall merit of each project and opportunities for collaboration. Two more Maine reviewers scored each proposal on the basis of relevance to Maine’s economy.
Beimann says UNE scored high across the board and was selected on the merit of its proposal for clinical research.
Of the $4 million UNE received, $3 million will be used to complete a state-of-the-art research facility and the remainder will be used to purchase high-tech equipment to jumpstart the research staff.
“We’re going to be able to make [the staff] more productive earlier and the people of Maine will see a return on their investment earlier,” Cormier says. “[The pharmacy school] will allow many of the chain pharmacies to expand into markets that didn’t have pharmacy services before.”
Schloss says the equipment will allow the research staff to execute drug analysis, therapeutic drug monitoring and clinical drug development years sooner than possible without the funds. He estimates the department could be capable of therapeutic drug monitoring in as little as one year, as opposed to 10 years without the grant money.
Supply, and lots of demand
Maine and states across the nation are suffering from severe shortages of qualified pharmacists to fill jobs in retail pharmacy, hospitals and research facilities. Pharmacy Manpower Project, an organization that collects, analyzes and disseminates data on the supply of licensed pharmacists in the United States, found Maine has an Aggregate Demand Index for pharmacists of 4.22. A score of between four and five means the state has moderate demand for pharmacists with difficulty filling some positions. A score of five indicates the demand is severe and positions are extremely difficult to fill. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services predicts the shortage will only worsen in the next 20 years as demand increases for highly skilled pharmacists trained to go beyond filling prescriptions to assess and adjust therapy for patients.
“It’s always a supply and demand situation,” Cormier says. “The demand started going up a few years ago as more as more retail pharmacies opened. We’re trying to catch up with that growth, but what we don’t want to do is overshoot it.”
Joseph Bruno, CEO of Community Pharmacies, based in Augusta and with locations throughout the state, says his business has been lucky.
“There’s definitely a pharmacists shortage; however we have not been hard hit by it, but we have experienced times of shortages,” says Bruno.
Bruno says Community Pharmacies has actually benefited from other retail outlets being shorthanded because it means new customers for their pharmacies, none of which Bruno says have been forced to close since Bruno and Community Pharmacies Vice President Steve Zanardi are pharmacists able to fill prescriptions in a pinch if one of their stores has a vacancy.
Bruno attributes Maine’s shortage to an aging pool of pharmacists and lack of attractive opportunities for pharmacy school graduates.
“The pool of established pharmacists is getting older, and we’ll need to replace them,” Bruno says. “Maine’s not an attractive place for pharmacists to come work and live. There are a lot of retail stores, but not a lot of hospitals.”
Pharmacist Kim Robinson, who recently earned her degree from the University of Iowa, says higher wages and proximity to her sister brought her to work at Community Pharmacy in Gorham, but what Maine lacks in opportunities might not keep her here for the long haul.
Robinson wants to establish a career as a community pharmacist as opposed to working in a hospital or research facility, and Maine is one of the few states left that doesn’t allow pharmacists to administer immunizations or perform blood glucose screenings.
Community partnerships
UNE is currently in its second of year of offering pre-pharmacy courses. The College of Pharmacy is hoping to recruit about half of the students from the pre-pharmacy program and attract the rest by word of mouth and from feeder schools in the area.
There is room for 100 students in the 2009 class, and 400 pharmacy students are expected on the Westbrook Campus within four years. UNE eventually plans to add a pharmaceutical research Ph.D. program.
UNE isn’t the only college of pharmacy welcoming students in 2009. Husson College in Bangor is also poised to begin its program at the same time as UNE’s College of Pharmacy. Cormier says the two schools together will offer the first modern pharmacy programs in Maine. Both schools plan to use Maine’s pool of hospitals and pharmacies for clinical clerkships, internships and residencies, and most of the faculty will work at Mercy, Maine Medical Center and Martin’s Point Health Care.
UNE’s College of Pharmacy plans to create a nationally recognized research center with students, pharmaceutical researchers, colleagues from other colleges, hospitals and labs all working together to experiment with dosages, to design clinical trials and to develop new products and services. Schloss says the school’s ultimate goal is to be among the top 25 pharmacy schools in the country in five to 10 years.
“When we started investigating the college of pharmacy, nationally there was only one school in the northeast that ranked in the top 25 in terms of research,” explains UNE President Ripich. “We really saw an opportunity to step forward quickly, an opportunity to look at where pharmacy research is headed.”
Cormier says the school will eventually use every hospital and pharmacy available in the state of Maine as part of its program and is establishing clinical training and research partnerships with Maine Medical Center in Portland, Mercy Health Care Systems in Portland, Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford, Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and MaineGeneral Health and Medical Center in Augusta and Waterville. The school is also seeking community-training opportunities with Hannaford Brothers Company, Shaw’s Osco Drug and Rite Aid. UNE also wants the school to provide a venue for existing Maine biotechnology companies to bring discoveries to the school for analysis and further development, which UNE hopes will help attract new business and investments to the state and bring the new products to market.
Ripich says that because UNE is a relatively young private school, the result of the 1978 merger of St. Francis College [see “UNE past and present,” page 38] and the College of Osteopathic Medicine, with the relatively small endowment ($26.4 million) and alumni base that entails, it has to be careful how it invests its money. The College of Pharmacy, she believes, is a good bet.
“There’s a lot of openness and room for us to create a really forward thinking college, and that’s what we’re about to do,” she says. “There are a lot of opportunities in southern Maine, and we can provide the workforce.”
Brandi Neal, a writer in Portland, can be reached at editorial@mainebiz.biz.
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