Every new year, millions of people make resolutions centered around change. But what stands in the way of that change? Many people know what they want to change or why that change is valuable, but one of the greatest barriers, often, is how: How do I make this change?

VCU’s Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation is intent on taking the mystery out of how to make change in pharmacy practice. Their solution? Just listen.

Launching this Thursday, the center’s new podcast, Voices in Pharmacy Innovation, aims to amplify the voices of innovators in pharmacy practice, offering insights and strategies to translate research and policy into practice in 30 minutes or less.

The podcast, Dave L. Dixon, Pharm.D., says, has been a goal of the center since its inception in 2015. A former director of the Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation, Dixon serves as the Nancy and Ronald McFarlane Professor of Pharmacy, chair of the Department of Pharmacotherapy & Outcomes Science at VCU School of Pharmacy and now, host of the podcast.

Ahead of the first episode, Dixon sat down with us to share more about what he hopes listeners will get out of this podcast – and why you should add Voices in Pharmacy Innovation to your listening rotation.

What motivated you to start this podcast?

It’s been a goal of the center to start a podcast since we started the Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation in 2015. We have always wanted to educate the pharmacy and health care community about how pharmacists can help improve health outcomes. Fast forward to today, the timing seemed right from the standpoint of the center, solidifying itself both locally and nationally. But also, there is so much wonderful work going on in pharmacy practice that there is a void of a platform to really highlight all the great innovation that's going on in the profession, and so we hope to be that voice.

I have listened quite a bit to How I Built This. In that podcast, they bring in entrepreneurs to talk about how they built their company, and that's what helped with developing this idea. A podcast being readily available to individuals is helpful; it’s free, you can listen to it on your commute, while you're doing chores at home or on your run.

Who is this podcast for?

With Voices in Pharmacy Innovation, we want to reach pharmacy practitioners – those that are on the front lines doing a lot of this great work but also interested in innovating their own practice. We hope that the ideas are distilled down in each episode in a way that individuals can take bits and pieces and apply to their own practice. We also hope that the podcast reaches leaders in health care, those who are often in the C-suite making decisions around implementing new clinical services to improve patient care. And finally, we want to reach those involved in health care policy, which is really where a lot of the innovative work ultimately lands in the sense of ‘How do we make this the standard of care? How do we make all the wonderful, innovative work that pharmacists do available to the masses?’ That's, I'd say, the ultimate goal.

What topics are you planning to cover? What are some things that those listening to some of the early episodes might expect to hear?

Our first episode will feature Jeffrey Bratberg, Pharm.D., who is a clinical professor at the University of Rhode Island and serves on the executive committee for the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence on Opioids and Overdose. Dr. Bratberg is an expert and advocate in substance use disorders, and it's very timely that our first episode will feature him given that January is Substance Use Disorder Treatment Month.

Following our initial episode, we also want to coincide topics with other key events such as Heart Month in February and World Immunization Week in April. So we'll be lining up experts and change agents in those areas in the episodes to come.

Are there other topics that you are hoping to cover down the line?

We certainly want to speak to individuals who are also entrepreneurial and have started their own businesses around some of the innovative practices that they've developed. Some of those key areas are particularly focused on improving community health, diabetes and technology as an emerging area, and the role that pharmacists play in improving rural health.

How does this connect to the mission of the Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation?

The Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation is really about advancing pharmacy practice through research, education and collaboration with the ultimate goal of improving patient health outcomes. So the podcast will really help amplify the research and the collaborative efforts that are going on in pharmacy practice and then ultimately educate our listeners on the podcast. Listeners will learn about those innovative practices and how to take bits and pieces of what's going on and apply it to their own practice. The podcast sort of pulls all of those parts – as it relates to research, education, policy, and practice – together into a single platform to disseminate all the great work that's going on in the profession.

Part of what makes this podcast different is that it gets into how you can take action, how you can take this information and use it in your practice. A paper being published is great from a research perspective, but we want to help listeners figure out, ‘How can I actually take this and do something with it?’

What are you most excited for about this podcast?

I'm excited about the opportunity to have deeper conversations with change makers in the field. Many of these individuals I know, have crossed paths with or have read their work. However, I believe this presents a significant opportunity to provide them with a different avenue to communicate what they've done and how others can implement it in their own practice.

When can folks start listening to the podcast?

The first episode comes out this Thursday, Jan. 8. Future episodes will be available on the second Thursday of the month. Episodes will be available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube – and on the Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation’s website at cppi.pharmacy.vcu.edu/podcast.