Changing Perceptions: Pharmacist to Address National Audience

Dr. Emmanuel Ayanjoke, the pain management and palliative care fellow in the Cedarville University School of Pharmacy, will serve as a keynote speaker for the annual meeting of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA).

APhA is the national professional organization for pharmacists, and this honor recognizes Ayanjoke’s expertise and insight in this health care discipline.

While many people think of pharmacists positively, it’s also within a limited scope: the person who fills my prescription. Ayanjoke wants to change that perspective.

“The goal of this conference is to motivate community pharmacists to start looking at avenues by which they can provide more clinical services,” he said.

Pharmacists in Ohio now have provider status, which means that if they have a Medicaid ID, they can bill Medicaid for providing patient care services. Insurance companies have also seen how pharmacists can improve health outcomes under collaborative practice agreements, where pharmacists work with a doctor to counsel patients and review and optimize their medications for the best possible results.

For the panel, Ayanjoke will focus on encouraging pharmacists, especially those newer to the profession, to “slow down” and use what they learned in their schooling to provide clinical services. He’ll be speaking from experience: after graduating with his Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2020, Ayanjoke launched a clinical practice at Ziks Family Pharmacy in Dayton, Ohio.

“As a new practitioner, I was originally apprehensive about whether I could really help patients, or whether I knew enough to impact them,” Ayanjoke said. “What I hope to communicate to other pharmacists is that they know more than they think, that they can help patients and that it doesn’t take too much to change lives.”

The APhA 2022 Annual Meeting and Expo will take place in San Antonio, Texas, from March 18–21. Ayanjoke’s panel will be on Saturday, March 19, at 9 a.m. He will be joined by Antonio Ciaccia, an APhA senior advisor who will serve as panel moderator; Nnodum Iheme, who is the founder of Ziks Family Pharmacy; and Nick Trego from CareSource, a Medicaid provider and health maintenance organization based in Dayton.  

Located in southwest Ohio, Cedarville University is an accredited, Christ-centered, Baptist institution with an enrollment of 4,715 undergraduate, graduate and online students in more than 150 areas of study. Founded in 1887, Cedarville is one of the largest private universities in Ohio, recognized nationally for its authentic Christian community, rigorous academic programs, including the Doctor of Pharmacy program, strong graduation and retention rates, accredited professional and health science offerings and high student engagement ranking. For more information about the University, visit cedarville.edu.