ACCP members Lucas Hill, Kirk Evoy, and Erin McCreary were selected by the 2021 ACCP Awards Committee to receive the College’s prestigious 2021 New Educator, New Investigator, and New Clinical Practitioner awards, respectively. The awards will be presented in Phoenix, Arizona, on Sunday, October 17, 2021, during the Awards and Recognition Ceremony of the 2021 ACCP Annual Meeting.

Hill

The ACCP New Educator Award recognizes and honors a new educator for outstanding contributions to the discipline of teaching and the education of health care practitioners. The awardee must have been a Full Member of ACCP at the time of nomination and a member at any level for a minimum of 3 years; in addition, the awardee must have completed his or her terminal training or degree less than 6 years previously. Lucas Hill, Pharm.D., BCPS, BCACP, is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin (UT – Austin) College of Pharmacy and director, Pharmacy Addictions Research & Medicine Program. Hill received his Pharm.D. degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy and completed postgraduate training at the University of Pittsburgh, specializing in family medicine.

The Awards Committee called attention to Hill’s innovative and interprofessional approaches to educating students, health professionals, and the community:

He has offered a service learning program to more than 2,000 health professions students in this area, developed an addiction medicine APPE clerkship with a physician co-preceptor, established a 2-year post-Pharm.D. fellowship in addiction medicine, and offered research and training opportunities for third-year pharmacy students. He is the lead pharmacy course director for a longitudinal IPE course titled “Foundations for Inter-professional Collaborative Practice” and teaches the module on team addiction care…. His work on Operation Naloxone, a local program to address overdose deaths among undergraduate students at UT, prompted an invitation in 2019 from the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy to speak at the White House about the pharmacist’s role in addressing the opioid crisis.

At the time of nomination, 11 of his 29 peer-reviewed publications and most of his national presentations were education-related. Hill has published original research in JAMA involving pharmacists providing naloxone in the community pharmacy setting to combat opiate overdose, and he served as a faculty panel chair for the ACCP/ASHP Ambulatory Care Self-Assessment Program. He has been honored with five UT – Austin College of Pharmacy/Texas Pharmacy Association teaching/education awards and is nationally recognized for his clinical work and education of professionals in opioid overdose prevention, pharmacist-centered harm reduction, and substance use disorder treatment and recovery.

Evoy

The New Investigator Award recognizes an ACCP member who has made a significant impact on an aspect of clinical pharmaceutical science. The awardee must have been a member of ACCP for more than 3 years, must have completed his or her terminal training or degree less than 6 years previously, and must have a research program with a substantial publication record that includes a programmatic theme or an especially noteworthy single publication. Kirk Evoy, Pharm.D., BCACP, is a clinical assistant professor at the UT – Austin College of Pharmacy, an adjoint assistant professor in the School of Medicine at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and an ambulatory care pharmacist at the Southeast Clinic of the University Health System in San Antonio. He received his Pharm.D. degree from the Purdue University College of Pharmacy. He then completed PGY1 pharmacy residency training at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics and PGY2 training in ambulatory care at Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in Mishawaka, Indiana. Evoy’s research has focused on opioid overdose prevention, gabapentin abuse, interprofessional education, and smoking cessation. At the time of nomination, he had published more than 35 papers in the peer-reviewed literature, including first-author publications in high-impact journals such as Drugs, JAMA, Journal of Addictive Diseases, and Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment

In its report to the ACCP Board of Regents, the Awards Committee wrote:

Dr. Evoy was co-investigator on a $9.8 million Texas Health and Human Services Opioid Response Overdose Prevention Project and has served as PI and faculty mentor on 10 other, smaller grants. His h-index is 11 and he has 401 citations. He has published 44 peer-reviewed manuscripts, presented 70 posters, and given 28 regional/national invited presentations along with numerous media interviews and has mentored numerous students’ and residents’ research projects. He has received several local awards for research and mentorship and the Outstanding Paper of the Year Award from the ACCP Ambulatory Care PRN. The impact of his research and training of others is lifesaving.

Evoy will deliver the annual New Investigator Award lecture, titled “Gabapentinoid Misuse and Medications for Opioid Use Disorder Inaccessibility as Factors in Opioid Risk Mitigation,” during the October 17 Awards and Recognition Ceremony.

McCreary

The New Clinical Practitioner Award honors a new clinical practitioner who has made outstanding contributions to the health of patients and/or the practice of clinical pharmacy. The awardee must have been a Full Member of ACCP at the time of nomination, as well as a member at any level for a minimum of 3 years; in addition, the awardee must have completed his or her terminal training or degree less than 6 years previously. Erin McCreary, Pharm.D., BCPS, BCIDP, is an infectious diseases clinical pharmacist and a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)/Infectious Disease Connect, Inc. McCreary received her Pharm.D. degree from the Auburn University Harrison School of Pharmacy and completed PGY1 pharmacy residency training and PGY2 residency training in infectious diseases at the University of Wisconsin Health in Madison.

The Awards Committee highlighted McCreary’s qualifications for this honor in its report to the ACCP Board of Regents:

The impact of her work as an infectious diseases clinical pharmacist at UPMC, especially over the past year, was impressive. She was the only pharmacist on the COVID-19 therapeutics team at her institution. She rapidly disseminated essential COVID-19 treatment via publications, presentations, and other media in addition to filling her clinical role. Of her 32 total publications, nearly all on clinical topics, 16 have been published since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, including therapeutics commentaries in BMJ and JAMA. Innovations in clinical practice noted in her recommendations include development of widely disseminated guidance documents on use of treatments for COVID (both recommended and not recommended), implementation of an innovative protocol for monoclonal antibodies administered in the ED, and contributions to an adaptive RCT investigating therapeutic options for patients with COVID-19. She also led several clinical initiatives in ID, including optimizing antimicrobial dosing guidelines, antibiotic allergy assessment and graded challenges, a pharmacist-driven vancomycin pharmacokinetics service, and optimization of antifungal medications delivery through enteral feeding tubes. She has received 5 local institutional awards for excellence in clinical service, innovation, and collaboration.

McCreary has actively been involved in ACCP. Her service to the College includes author of publications on behalf of ACCP’s National Resident Advisory and Student Network Advisory committees, lead author of a chapter in the ACCP-ASHP Infectious Diseases Self-Assessment Program, and speaker at the College’s Annual Meetings. She has been a member and/or chair of 12 different ACCP committees.

Members of the 2021 ACCP Awards Committee who reviewed and evaluated the nominations for these awards were Mary Amato (chair), Kristi Kelley (vice chair), Justin Arnall, Jacqueline Bainbridge, David Bright, John Conry, Lisa Davis, Pramodini Kale-Pradhan, Robert Parker, Nancy Shapiro, Chasity Shelton, Mate Soric, Michael Thomas, and Kathleen Vest.