Weeda honored with national award for clinical research

In a recent interview, Erin Weeda was asked if she had any advice for students interested in a career in pharmacy related outcomes research. She gave a considerate and helpful response, but the best advice would probably be “Follow in my footsteps. If you can.”

Keeping up with the young associate professor of clinical pharmacy and outcome sciences would take a pair of seven-league boots. She has accumulated many honors early in her career, including most recently as the recipient of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) 2022 New Investigator Award.

She is the first Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) College of Pharmacy faculty member to win this national award, which will be presented at the ACCP Global Conference on Clinical Pharmacy in San Francisco this October.

The New Investigator Award highlights the research program of an ACCP member who has made a major impact in an aspect of clinical pharmaceutical science.

"Dr. Weeda serves as an excellent role model for interprofessional collaboration in outcomes research working with other health care professionals in a variety of disciplines, including students in many of her research efforts," said her department chair, Kathy Chessman. "In addition to being an outstanding researcher, Dr. Weeda is instilling in our students and residents the knowledge and attitudes necessary to both conduct research and to evaluate the medical literature. She imparts her knowledge in outcomes and assessment to her students in a manner such that they not only learn but enjoy it!" 

One area of health outcomes research in which Weeda has made an impact is in health disparities research, specifically looking at how U.S. counties with diabetes clinical trial sites had significantly different county-level social determinants of health. She also helps develop other researchers by coordinating the Pharmacy Residency Research Certificate Program, which improves residents’ ability to conduct, disseminate and interpret research.

Weeda combines her talents for research with a flair for teaching. Last year, she won the 2021 MUSC Foundation Teaching Excellence Award: Developing Teacher, an enterprise-wide honor of an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the University’s teaching mission. She has also been honored as the MUSC College of Pharmacy Overall Teacher of the Year, P3 Teacher of the Year, and Mentor of the Year.

After earning her Pharm.D. at the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy in 2014, Weeda served a post-graduate year one residency at Memorial Hermann – Texas Medical Center in Houston and then as Health Economics and Outcomes Research Fellow at the University of Connecticut and Hartford Hospital. She also served as an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy. A board-certified pharmacotherapy specialist, she has more than 60 peer-reviewed publications. She joined the MUSC College of Pharmacy in 2017.