Rural Health

First-year student pharmacist Amanda Whitehead, age 33, is one of five students in the inaugural class in the rural health track. The track is part of the college’s Rural Health […]

Tyler Young grew up in Oakesdale, Washington, a town of about 400 people, and a 45-minute drive south of Spokane. He graduated from high school with only 11 other students in his class and his first job was on the wheat farm where he spent summers from ages 14 to 20 spraying weeds in 90-degree heat, driving a tractor, and harvesting the crop.

A recent $2.2 million gift to Washington State University’s College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (CPPS) will increase opportunities for PharmD students to focus on the health care needs of residents in rural Washington.

This extraordinary anonymous gift has helped to launch CPPS’ Rural Health Initiative (RHI) to improve access to health care in the rural communities of Washington. Started in the fall of 2021, RHI is an ambitious 10-year plan to create opportunities for student pharmacists and post-graduate pharmacists to specialize in delivery of rural health care. Access to health care providers in rural Washington continues to be a challenge for the nearly 800,000 residents living in these areas. It’s estimated that Washington needs 600 new providers to eliminate this gap in access to care. The Rural Health Initiative aims to alleviate this problem.

Though it has been a difficult year of remote learning, fourth-year pharmacy student Trevor Schultz did not miss a beat. Passionate about working with rural and underserved communities, Schultz teamed […]

This March, third- and fourth-year Yakima pharmacy students participated in COVID-19 vaccine outreach at Horizon Pharmacy in Wapato, in the lower Yakima Valley.

Student volunteers helped prepare and administer the vaccinations, as well as counseled the patients afterwards.

In the United States there are 14 million people living in medically underserved areas where access to health care continues to be a chronic problem with no clear solutions. Many […]

The Paul Lauzier Foundation has awarded the Washington State University College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (CPPS) a $47,500 grant. The grant will fund patient care services for those experiencing […]

In the pocket of central Washington, lies the small farming community of Mattawa, population: 4,437. Most residents of the predominantly Latino town work in the acres of surrounding orchards, picking fruit that end up in supermarkets halfway around the world. This is where 26-year-old Osmark Jauregui, part of WSU’s PharmD inaugural Yakima class, found his calling as a pharmacist.