Health equity and barriers to medication access with Inma Hernandez, PharmD, PhD

The UCSF School of Pharmacy’s Department of Clinical Pharmacy will host Inma Hernandez, PharmD, PhD, from UC San Diego for the fourth installment of the Amplifying Voices Speaker Series. The seminar and discussion, “Financial and Geospatial Barriers to Medication Access: A Health Equity Lens,” will occur on Zoom on Friday, February 3, from noon to 1:00 p.m. Pacific time.

Several times per year, the department’s Monthly Research Seminar features early career pharmacists, who provide new and diverse perspectives on clinical pharmacy research.

Hernandez is an associate professor with tenure at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. She has authored more than 100 scientific articles, including first-authored papers in JAMA, JAMA Internal Medicine, and Annals of Internal Medicine, among other leading journals. Her research has been covered by media worldwide and has been featured by the main media outlets, including New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Forbes, and BBC. Hernandez currently holds the prestigious National Academy of Medicine Fellowship in Pharmacy and serves as an associate editor for Health Affairs Scholar.

Hernandez has extensively studied the underuse of anticoagulation in stroke prevention in patients with cardiac arrhythmias. She is the principal investigator of an R01 award from NIH to study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients with cardiovascular disease. In addition, she has made significant contributions to the study of pharmaceutical pricing. In 2020–2021, Hernandez led a group of investigators evaluating geographic access to COVID-19 vaccine administration locations. Their analyses informed the Pennsylvania Department of Health’s distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in medically underserved areas. Hernandez received her PharmD from the University of Navarra in Spain and her PhD in Health Services Research and Policy from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to joining UCSD, she served on the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh. She was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2018, and in 2021 became the first pharmacist to be recognized with the Academy Health Alice S. Hersh Emerging Leader Award. She is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.

If you have an affiliation with the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, you should receive an Outlook invite. Others in the UCSF community may register for the event.