Increasing Global Access to Medicines
Roivant Sciences and Roivant Social Ventures (RSV) have partnered to host the Access to Medicines Internship and Fellowship Program, providing real-world drug development experience to talented PharmD students.
This summer Magdalene Mallory is serving as an RSV Global Access Fellow, where she is using her grant award to volunteer at Goodlife Access and Goodlife Pharmacy in Rwanda, and is leading initiatives to:
Conduct community healthcare clinic days that are creating access to otherwise unavailable blood pressure and blood glucose screenings for hundreds of community members in Kigali.
Create patient materials for post-screening healthcare education that provide next steps for building better health.
Standardize screening techniques for providers to promote sterile practice, patient privacy, and continuity of care.
Assist in the opening of new pharmacies.
Create and present a proposal on the creation of non-communicable disease screening/consultation rooms, including, but not limited to scheduling, building, budget, staffing requirements, and educational marketing to community members.
Contribute to the designing and setting up of patient consultation rooms in new pharmacies.
We sat down with Magdalene to learn more about what drives her work and how her summer fellowship in Rwanda will impact her career development.
Magdalene grew up in a small town in Texas where she noticed early on that accessing healthcare created a difficult challenge within her community. From an early age she began volunteering at Center of Hope alongside her parents, where she witnessed firsthand the barriers individuals face accessing basic supplies and healthcare services.
Magdalene shared, "From the very beginning I have made it my personal mission to help increase access and trust for underserved patients." This passion to build patient-centered access is deeply rooted in personal experience for Magdalene. Growing up she remembers watching her mother travel three to four hours to see physicians that she felt she could trust to provide proper care for herself and her family. Magdalene became hyper aware of and educated on the mistrust of our medical system that marginalized communities have developed over time.
Magdalene's Global Access Fellowship has created the opportunity for her to put the critical skillsets she has developed through her PharmD program directly into action. "The work we are doing through RSV and Goodlife in Kigali (Rwanda) is merging my passion for treating underserved patients with my interests in both clinical and industry work. I'm so excited to already be witnessing just how impactful my work can be to the communities that I am dedicated to serving!"
Are there any particular areas of medicine that you’re especially interested in learning about and helping treat?
"I've become especially interested in Women's Health and how it encompasses so many areas, including reproductive health, maternal health, and a variety of chronic conditions such as Osteoporosis, autoimmune disease, and types of cancer that are disproportionately impacting women. I'm passionate about this because I feel that it is especially important to advocate for advancement in a time where we are seeing policies and laws that are hindering the advancement of our already disproportionate care and treatment."
What type of impact do you hope to create with your work?
"In addition to creating more trust and access in medicine, I also want to help patients be better able to advocate for themselves. I think it's really easy for all of us to only seek health advice when we're sick, but it's truly important for us to encourage and teach patients that also seeking help in living healthy lives can help them feel good throughout all their experiences."
What caught your interest about the fellowship that you are engaged with this summer?
"I felt an immediate connection with RSV and Goodlife wanting to create better quality healthcare, which aligned perfectly with my personal mission to build healthy, trust-focused medicine for communities that are at times overlooked. I knew I wanted to be involved in helping both organizations fulfill their missions!"
Goodlife launched operations in 2023 in Rwanda. They work in partnership with others to identify crucial health needs, design interventions, and embed those into sustainable models - all while using data to continually refine their work. Working in Rwanda provides an excellent environment for public health: their government has made a long-term commitment to data-driven investments in health and wellness, addressing the root causes of disease, and encouraging the private sector.
Access to Medicines Internship/Fellowship Program
This May, Roivant Sciences and Roivant Social Ventures partnered to host our Access to Medicines Internship and Fellowship Program, providing real-world drug development experience to qualified PharmD students. The intentions of this program are to expand access to medicines to underserved populations, and to further UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy's goal of providing future industry leaders with pharmaceutical experience during their PharmD tenure.
During the Spring 2024 semester all interns completed RSV's "Making Medicines" course at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the top ranked School of Pharmacy in the United States. This innovative course was designed to introduce PharmD students to the new drug approval process and key issues in drug discovery, pre-clinical testing, clinical trials, FDA approval, and global access to medicines. The course is taught by Lindsay Androski, RSV Founder & CEO, and Scott Singleton, Associate Professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy.