Forging connections: PharmAlliance reignites global partnerships
Monash students Yannee Liu and Mia Curigliano attended the PharmAlliance Week in 2023 as student co-leads.
PharmAlliance is an international partnership bringing together three of the world’s most highly regarded schools of pharmacy. In July this year, Monash University Prato Centre in Italy hosted PharmAlliance Week 2023, the partnership’s most widely attended conference since the pandemic began and the first fully in-person event in three years. Attendees relished the chance to meet with friends and colleagues, and students made valuable new connections.
PharmAlliance: Moving the needle on health
PharmAlliance was established in 2015 to pursue “big ideas” in pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences by pooling the research and expertise of its three partners – UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, UCL School of Pharmacy at University College London, and Monash University's Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
As Caroline Sasser, from UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, explains: “Our own schools are excellent research and core teaching institutions. So we started thinking, ‘What’s the next level? What can we do with our collective expertise that will really move the needle for human health all around the world?’”
Since its inception, collaborators within the partnership have published more than 100 articles, facilitated visiting scholars, and welcomed exchange students.
Caroline has been PharmAlliance Program Coordinator since 2021 and sees the collaboration as invaluable.
“It’s so rare that higher education institutions come together and lay competition by the wayside,” she says. “We’re competing as a team and truly trying to pursue ideas that we couldn’t tackle by ourselves”.
Caroline Sasser (UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy) has been the PharmAlliance Program Coordinator since 2021.
In 2020 and 2021, that connection was maintained virtually, with PharmAlliance Week held entirely online due to pandemic restrictions. A hybrid conference then took place in 2022, with some participants meeting in London. This year’s event was the first fully in-person gathering since the pandemic began. Hybrid access options were also maintained. While acknowledging the benefits of these options, Caroline welcomed the return to face-to-face gathering.
“A large part of the value proposition of PharmAlliance, and why people collaborate, is the level of friendship and networking,” she says. “In-person meeting is so important for that humanistic side of collaboration.”
Of the partnership, Caroline adds, “We aim to transform the way we educate, research, practice and engage our students.”
Valuable student experiences in Prato
Fostering student engagement is a key aim of PharmAlliance, and this year resulted in two Monash students attending the conference in Prato: Yannee Liu, a fourth-year student; and Mia Curigliano, who is completing her third year.
Having taken part in previous PharmAlliance events, Yannee and Mia were encouraged by Dr Suzanne Caliph, Senior Lecturer at Monash and academic lead for PharmAlliance, to take on a bigger role.
“Suzanne saw potential in both of us and invited us to join PharmAlliance as student co-leads for Monash,” explains Yannee.
They travelled to Prato, where they were involved in keynote addresses and presentations on Monash student perspectives of mental health and wellbeing initiatives.
While Yannee and Mia were involved in last year’s hybrid conference, they both relished the chance to connect with other attendees in person.
“For the conferences and networking sessions, you really have to be in the same room. The conversations are buzzing, the atmosphere just comes alive,” Yannee says.
That connection led to Mia and Yannee getting involved in other projects. Mia, for example, worked with Dr Justin Turner, Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Medicine Use and Safety (CMUS), on lectures for first-year students about the PharmAlliance experience.
Ways to translate and communicate research in meaningful ways were also discussed in Prato.
“We have all this amazing research coming out of universities and institutions, so how do we go about disseminating it so it reaches the communities that need it the most?” says Yannee.
The result is an emerging project focusing on the use of infographics as a tailored communication tool. Caroline Sasser is also involved in this project. And thanks to PharmAlliance, Mia and Yannee are now also working with Professor Simon Bell, of CMUS, on developing infographics to help better communicate with healthcare professionals and the community.
Scholarships inspire students across generations
Jan and Ian Pitman at their 1958 graduation from the Victorian College of Pharmacy. Insert: Jan Pitman with her children, taken in 2015 (L-R: Victoria Robinson, Mark Pitman, Jan Pitman and Amanda Leach).
Financial assistance from Monash helped make Mia and Yannee’s participation in PharmAlliance Week possible. Similarly, many decades ago in 1958 the receipt of a scholarship shaped the career trajectory of another student, Ian Pitman.
After completing his Pharmaceutical Chemist Certificate in 1958 at what was then the Victorian College of Pharmacy, Ian was awarded the Kodak Travelling Scholarship in 1959. In the same year he married Jan, a graduate of the same course.
“We graduated with a diploma in pharmacy, rather than a degree, and Ian wanted to do further study. Following our marriage, we went to London using the money from the travelling scholarship,” Jan explains.
Ian completed an honours degree in chemistry, graduating in 1962. A further scholarship brought Ian, Jan and their growing family back to Australia, where Ian completed a PhD. The family lived overseas again, in the United States, and in 1976 returned home when Ian was appointed Dean of Pharmaceutics at the Victorian College of Pharmacy.
In 2015, Dr Ian Pitman passed away. Just before his death, he expressed to Jan his regret at never having donated money for a travelling scholarship like the one that had kickstarted his own career. That conversation stayed with Jan, and when, a few years later, she read about PharmAlliance in Alchemy, she and her children knew what to do.
“I was reading about this program they’d set up with the University of North Carolina and University College London, which interestingly was my husband’s alma mater,” she says. “I thought, ‘Well, that’s a bit serendipitous.’ So I asked the family and they thought it was a good idea to make a financial gift, not so much in memory of Ian but inspired by him.”
This year, the faculty gratefully accepted the Pitman family’s donation, which will be used to help fund a PharmAlliance related project.
Future possibilities
Yannee Liu presented at PharmAlliance Week this year, which was held in Prato, Italy.
For Mia, PharmAlliance Week opened her eyes to the many available international opportunities. Her next steps involve overseas study, and a subject she encountered in Prato.
“In 2024 I'll be going to UNC – and my project is actually on infographics,” she says.
Thanks to encouragement she received while in Prato, a PhD is also on her radar.
Yannee’s time in Prato also consolidated her passion to pursue a PhD and a career in research, and gave her a glimpse of her potential global prospects.
Caroline Sasser appreciates how coming together at PharmAlliance Week sparks future possibilities.
“It’s just so rare to have all these world-class experts in different types of practice connecting like this. And who knows what kind of fantastic ideas and collaborations will spin out of casual conversations over shared meals, that you just can’t get on Zoom.”
Find out more at pharmalliance.org.
