How a PharmD Alum Leads Public Health Innovation Through Poison Control

Serena Huntington, PharmD ’11, DABAT, has dedicated her career to advancing public health by protecting against toxic exposures in her local community. As managing director of the California Poison Control System (CPCS)  Fresno/Madera division, she also trains pharmacy students and residents in medical toxicology.

“It’s the best of a lot of different fields of pharmacy,” said Huntington. “Before my own rotation here, I didn’t even know that poison control centers existed, or that they are staffed by pharmacists.”

Now, as an assistant clinical professor at the UCSF School of Pharmacy, she draws connections between toxicology and pharmacology for trainees, helping them understand how foundational knowledge from pharmacy school, such as mechanisms of action, play out in a clinical environment.

“Pharmacology will help you predict what will happen in an overdose,” she said. “When you really dive into how drugs work and interact with the body, that’s going to help you learn toxicology.”

Pharmacy as emergency response

The CPCS, which is part of UCSF’s School of Pharmacy and has four divisions, estimates that for every dollar spent on poison control, $15 is saved in health care costs.

One of the most fulfilling parts of Huntington’s job is collaborating with many different health care professionals as part of an emergency response team, with each type of triage case presenting unique challenges.

About half of the 650 daily calls involve people under the age of 19, and more than a third are children under age five who ingest a potential toxin while innocently exploring their environments, she said. Many of those cases involve over-the-counter medications. Other home calls are more region-specific, such as occupational, pesticide or wildfire exposures.

Calls from health care teams more typically involve overdoses, many of which are the result of self-harm attempts. Determining whether a patient needs to go to an emergency room is a large part of poison control counseling, and almost 75 percent of exposure calls can be managed at home.

Huntington added that one of the most challenging parts of the job is the uptick in the number of aggressive interventions she’s experienced since the pandemic. “Cases have become more complicated as new drugs are discovered, and especially when it comes to trends and fads,” she said, noting that young adults and teens are especially prone to viral challenges that end in disaster.

She also recalled how people resorted to bleach or ivermectin during the pandemic as a result of misinformation. “People hear about magical health ‘cures’ from social media, and then we start to see the aftermath of that,” she said.

Triaging through dangerous trends

Beyond emergency response, Huntington stays current with evolving issues in toxicology through her ongoing research.

Huntington trains pharmacy students and residents in medical toxicology.

“One emerging area of concern is tejocote root, a supplement marketed for weight loss,” she said. “We’ve found that some batches are contaminated with cardiac glycosides, which can cause dangerous heart effects. Patients end up in the hospital with palpitations and bradycardia, and that’s how we’ve identified contamination issues.”

She also stays active in professional organizations, shaping policy and advocating for public safety both nationally and locally. Her work with America’s Poison Centers –– which represents the United States’ 55 poison centers in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) –– involves writing rules for PoisonHelp.org that help expand the online database to provide the public with updated information.

Community outreach and impact

As part of the CPCS’s public health education team, Huntington visits high schools with the Safe Kids Central Valley coalition to give talks to both youth and their parents about injury prevention and mental health issues related to substance abuse.

As a first-generation pharmacy student, giving back to her community reminds her of why she chose to pursue pharmacy school. She recalls visiting community pharmacies from an early age with her mother, an immigrant from Taiwan who overcame health issues with medication and help from compassionate pharmacists who demonstrated patience when faced with language and communication barriers.

“I always thought pharmacy would give me more time with patients than being a physician, and allow me to be more a part of my community,” she said. “I wanted to impact my community, and it has been so personally rewarding.”

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