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Welcome to the Program on Medicines and Public Health within the Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of Southern California. Our program focuses on the development and expansion of several research initiatives focusing on access to medications, drug utilization and pharmaceutical policy.

We conduct innovative drug utilization and pharmacoepidemiology research to better understand the underlying mechanisms responsible for the use, underuse, and unsafe use of medications, how these patterns may influence health outcomes and health disparities, and what can be done from a community and policy perspective to address these growing public health problems. 

Our mission is to improve equitable access and safe use of essential medicines in the U.S. and globally. The Program will develop and lead interdisciplinary research efforts focusing on drug utilization, access to medicines, and pharmaceutical policy to better understand why medications are used, or not used, and how they can and should be used in the population to promote equity, longevity, and good health.

Our goal is to improve our understanding of the role of medicines in public health and health equity and to promote public accountability to better ensure access to, and safe use of, medications at the national, state, and local levels. In an effort to achieve these goals, we often incorporate the health and human rights concept of ‘essential medicines’ in our research and programming.  

  • Qato Awarded Grant from the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts

     
     

    Dima M. Qato, Hygeia Centennial Chair at USC Mann, was awarded a $437,920 grant from the Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE). The grant supports research assessing trends and impact of the availability of the medication buprenorphine for opioid-use disorder at pharmacies in communities across the U.S.

    Just 18% of people with opioid-use disorder report using lifesaving medications such as buprenorphine in their recovery—despite efforts to increase the number of providers who can prescribe it.

    Qato will work with colleagues on a comprehensive evaluation of the availability and dispensing of buprenorphine at chain and independent pharmacies, examining whether and how disparities in access to buprenorphine influence disparities in buprenorphine discontinuation rates. The project seeks to determine which patients and communities are most at risk for gaps in buprenorphine availability.

    “The aim is to identify trends and disparities to medications for opioid-use disorder access at the national, state and local level to inform future policy discussions,” according to FORE. The grant is part of $900,000 in funding recently awarded as part of the organization’s commitment to ameliorating the nation’s opioid crisis.

    Collaborators will include Adam Leventhal of the USC Institute for Addiction Science and Keck School of Medicine, Sarah Axeen of the USC Schaeffer Center and Keck, Robert Vos of the USC Spatial Sciences Institute and USC Dornsife, and Jenny Guadamuz, a former postdoctoral research fellow at USC Mann and the Schaeffer Center, now an assistant professor at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health.

  • Qato Receives USC Collaborative Research Award

    Dima Qato, Hygeia Centennial Chair at the USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, has received a $50,000 Collaborative Research Planning Award from the USC Office of Research and Innovation. The grant supports an initiative combining data-driven approaches with population-based claims data to help prevent adverse drug interactions. The project blends the expertise of the Mann School, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

    The research is vital, Qato notes, because increasing polypharmacy—the use of multiple medications at once—has become a leading cause of preventable injuries and fatalities nationwide. “Despite this rise, though, existing drug safety monitoring still focuses on the side effects of individual medications,” she says. “The role of drug-to-drug interactions is being overlooked—putting patients at risk.”

    Qato, who also directs the Mann School’s Program on Medicines and Public Health, is working with co-principal investigators Nicholas Tatonetti of Cedars-Sinai’s Department of Computational Biomedicine and Sze-Chuan Suen, associate professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at USC Viterbi. They are blending their expertise to employ AI, machine learning and big data techniques to reveal dangerous polypharmacy interactions that have previously gone undetected—especially in such vulnerable populations as children and older adults. 

    Based on this project’s results, the team will apply for funding from the National Institutes of Health to further their efforts in preventing adverse drug events. “Our research is designed to fundamentally enhance the way drug safety surveillance is conducted,” Qato says.

    The USC Collaborative Research Planning Award supports the creation of multidisciplinary research teams, bringing together several disciplines to provide a broad range of expertise and generate creative solutions to solve real-world problems.  

  • Qato Awarded $1.65M NIH Grant

     

    Funding will support research to advance policies within Medicare Part D to prevent pharmacy closures and advance equitable access to medicines

    Dima M. Qato, associate professor of pharmacy at the USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Director of the Program on Medicines and Public Health, was awarded a four-year, $1,650,000 grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) for her project “Structural Racism in Medicare Part D, Pharmacy Closures and Disparities in Medication Adherence in Older Adults.”

    Qato’s pioneering work on the impact of structural racism on pharmacy closures and access to medicines aims to advance equitable, and eliminate discriminatory, policies within Medicare Part D and resolve persistent disparities in pharmacy access and adherence among chronically ill older adults.

    “Pharmacy closures may be an overlooked community-level mechanism of structural racism that exacerbates the adverse consequences of segregation on disparities in pharmacy access and medication adherence,” said Qato, who serves as the Hygeia Centennial Chair at the USC Mann School and is a senior fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics. Qato holds a joint appointment with the USC Spatial Sciences Insitute at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

    Despite evidence that pharmacy closures contribute to declines in medication adherence, rigorous investigations on the extent and impact of structural racism within Medicare Part D–policies that reinforce differential access to resources and opportunities–and pharmacy closures on disparities in medication adherence have not been conducted, according to Qato.

    “We need to shift the focus within Medicare Part D payment and delivery reform from addressing individual-level barriers toward addressing structural racism and how it operates at the community level, specifically pharmacy closures, to adversely affect minority older adults living in segregated neighborhoods,” Qato said. “The failure to do so may undermine ongoing efforts to reduce disparities”

    “The goal of this project is to evaluate the extent and impact of pharmacy closures on medication adherence among chronically ill older adults with Medicare Part D and identify subgroups most at-risk for non-adherence post-closure,” Qato said.

    A public health advocate and community pharmacist, Qato aims to generate new evidence to guide Medicare Part D payment and delivery reforms to protect pharmacies from closure. For older adults who rely on their pharmacies, Qato’s project aims to reduce disparities in medication access and advance health equity.

 

Recent Insights:

Jenny Guadamuz, Dima Qato, and their coauthors (2021) found that as of 2020, pharmacies in Black and Latino neighborhoods were more likely to close and less likely to offer immunizations, 24-hour, and drive-through services than pharmacies in other neighborhoods. Read the publication in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association here.

In these visualizations, Guadamuz and co-authors (2021) explore trends and disparities in access to pharmacies across Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston communities based on their racial or ethnic composition from 2015 to 2020. Guadamuz et al. hypothesized that disparities in the availability and access to pharmacies would be associated with racial or ethnic segregation, with fewer pharmacies being located in segregated minority communities. Explore these visualizations, created by PMPH staff, Andrew S., to find out more!

Source: Guadamuz et al. (2021). Visualizations were created by PMPH staff, Andrew S., based on study data.

In another recent publication, Jenny Guadamuz, Dima Qato, and their coauthors (2021) found that ‘pharmacy deserts’ disproportionately affect Black and Latino residents in many of the largest U.S cities. Read the publication in Health Affairs here. Find the press release here, and the USC Schaeffer Center coverage here. Additional coverage was also broadcasted on Fox News Los Angeles affiliate KTTV-TV and Spectrum News 1.

A Podcast discussion with lead author, Dr. Guadamuz, on the study investigating accessibility of pharmacies by neighborhood type in large US cities from 2007 to 2015. Listen to the Health Affairs Podcast with Editor-in-Chief Alan Weil:

Recent News:

 

Recent Events:

 

  • Dr. Dima Qato an invited panelist for Health Equity Summit on Pharmacy Deserts
    Dima Qato, PharmD, MPH, PhD was an invited panelist at Kearny Health Equity Summit 3.0 on Friday, October 17
  • Invited talk at University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy
    Dima M. Qato, PharmD, MPH, PhD presented an invited talk, the Coy W. Waller Distinguished Lecture, "Structural Racism and Disparities in Access to Essential Medicines in the U.S.," Friday, October 4, University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy.
  • Invited Talk at APhA Annual Meeting
    Dima M. Qato, PharmD, MPH, PhD will deliver an invited talk at the APhA Annual Meeting on Sunday, March 24, "The Problem of Pharmacy Deserts: Health Equity Implications and Potential Solutions."
  • Dima Qato, PharmD, MPH, PhD will present "Pharmacy Deserts and Disparities in Pharmacy Access to PrEP in Black/Latinx Neighborhoods," UCSF Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) INSIGHTS lecture series, Tuesday, March 5, 2024 at 11 am.
  • Panel Discussion
    A panel discussion featuring Dima M. Qato, PharmD, MPH, PhD, "Innovative Approaches & Sustainable Strategies," presented during a Sept. 12 virtual workshop on supply chain disruptions organized by the National Academies' Science and Technology for Resilience Program, was highlighted in a new summary publication by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.