Marialice Bennett to receive Remington Honor Medal, highest honor in pharmacy
The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy faculty emerita Marialice S. Bennett, RPh, FAPhA, BSPharm ’69, was named the recipient of the 2021 Remington Honor Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and the profession’s highest recognition. Bennett will be recognized during the APhA Annual Meeting & Exposition in Los Angeles on March 12-15, 2021.
Bennett, the seventh woman to be recognized since the Remington Honor Medal’s inception in 1919, retired in 2015 as the director of the Community and Ambulatory Care Residency program and as a professor of clinical pharmacy at The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy. She served as president of APhA from 2011–2012.
Bennett was selected in recognition of her passionate leadership and pioneering vision for advancing patient care and the profession of pharmacy through her creation of innovative community practice sites, her contributions to pharmacy education and community-based residency training, and her mentoring impact on the professional and personal lives of generations of current and future pharmacists.
“Marialice is a trailblazer in community pharmacy," said Henry Mann, PharmD, FCCP, FCCM, FASHP, dean and professor at the College of Pharmacy. "Her accomplishments are broadly known across the United States and she is widely respected. Even our students who have not yet met her are aware of her sustained contributions. As an emerita professor, Marialice has continued to be an integral and active part of our college community where she mentors students and inspires them to excel. We are all immensely proud of Marialice and extend our warmest congratulations on this very deserved recognition.”
Throughout her 50 years of local, state and national service to the profession, Bennett has developed and implemented major innovative practices to transform community pharmacy practice.
“She is an early adopter of new ideas and a natural leader who shattered boundaries to move the profession of pharmacy forward,” Bennett’s nominators wrote. In the late 1980s, she moved from hospital practice to the community pharmacy setting and “leveraged the clinical care skills she developed from inpatient practice to realize her vision for pharmacists in community-based settings.”
In the early 1990s, her Clinical Partners Programs at the Ohio State Pharmaceutical Care Clinic was among the first practice sites where pharmacists provided disease state management services through one-on-one appointments with patients. It was among the first programs in the nation to bill insurance companies for clinical pharmacist services, and it was a participant within the APhA Foundation’s first pharmacist-provided patient care projects.
In the late 1990s, Bennett collaborated with Dr. Stephanie Cook, an emergency department physician, to create University Health Connection, a cutting-edge, interprofessional clinic that offered a blend of community pharmacy, urgent care and primary care services.
In 2012, Bennett’s vision continued when Kroger and the College of Pharmacy created the first-in-the-nation postgraduate year PGY1/PGY2 Community Pharmacy Practice Residency and combined a Master of Science in Health-System Pharmacy Administration (with emphasis in community) training program – the first of its kind to be accredited by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP).
“I first met Marialice in 1978 when I worked at Lou Marcy’s Medicine Shop on Kenny Road," said Robert Weber, RPh, PharmD, MS, BCPS, FASHP, administrator for pharmacy services at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center and assistant dean for Medical Center Affairs at the College of Pharmacy. "We worked weekends together and I quickly saw she was respected by patients and providers, and had a much different approach and vision to her practice than I expected. So I wasn’t surprised at her success and contribution to pharmacy. The Remington Medal Honor recognizes her competency and celebrates her habit of ‘caring and feeding’ residents, faculty, pharmacists and, importantly, patients. I owe her a debt of gratitude for blazing the trail for us.”
According to one of Bennett’s letters of support, “We’d be hard pressed to identify another pharmacist who has excited more young pharmacists to be the leaders we need for the profession of tomorrow. And she enjoys every minute of every interaction with both [student pharmacists] and practitioners.”
Another letter of support noted, “Marialice embodies the very essence of an exemplary leader—she inspires others with her passion, challenges the process and seeks innovative ways for improvement, and shares her vision for the future. To top that off, she is a genuinely good person who makes everyone around her smile, feel welcome and want to contribute more to the profession than they ever thought they could.”
The Remington Honor Medal, named for eminent community pharmacist, manufacturer and educator Joseph P. Remington, was established in 1918 to recognize distinguished service on behalf of American pharmacy during the preceding years, culminating in the past year or during a long period of outstanding activity or fruitful achievement. The APhA Foundation has created the Remington Endowment to lead collaborative problem-solving with the entire profession of pharmacy and its stakeholders to improve our nation’s most pressing medication use and safety issues.
A graduate of Ohio State, Bennett has received the APhA Gloria Niemeyer Francke Leadership Mentoring Award, APhA Community Residency Excellence in Precepting Award, APhA Daniel B. Smith Practice Excellence Award, APhA Linwood F. Tice Friend of APhA–ASP Award, APhA Fellow, APhA Foundation Jacob W. Miller Award, Bowl of Hygeia Award from Ohio, and many others, including those from ASHP, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP), Ohio State and the Ohio Pharmacists Association (OPA).
Beyond Ohio State and APhA, Bennett has served in leadership, expert and mentoring roles for the APhA Foundation, the U.S. Pharmacopeia, AACP, ASHP, the Center for Pharmacy Practice Accreditation, OPA, the Ohio Pharmacist Foundation and in the area of diabetes.