Wafa Samara, PharmD, Shares How Oncology Pharmacists Are Transforming Cancer Care at City of Hope

Pharmacy Times® interviewed Wafa Samara, PharmD, vice president and chief pharmacy officer at City of Hope in Duarte, California, on the critical role of oncology pharmacists at City of Hope and how they are transforming cancer care. Wafa Samara, PharmD, shares her personal motivation for advancing oncology pharmacy, emphasizing how pharmacists working at the top of their licenses are able to improve patient access to innovative treatments and enhance outcomes. At City of Hope, pharmacists are embedded within multidisciplinary teams, ensuring that patients receive the right medication at the right time, regardless of their location.

Samara highlights the institution’s commitment to recruiting highly skilled, oncology-certified pharmacists who actively participate in research and clinical care. The pharmacy team goes beyond traditional roles, engaging in information technology (IT), antimicrobial stewardship, business analytics, and contracting. A unique aspect of City of Hope’s model is the introduction of pharmacy navigators, who guide patients from diagnosis through treatment, handling medication access, prior authorizations, and financial assistance. This innovative approach elevates the role of oncology pharmacists, making them indispensable in patient-centered cancer care.

Pharmacy Times: What is the role and value of the oncology pharmacist in the cancer care team at City of Hope?

Wafa Samara, PharmD: For me, oncology is a personal journey. My mom is a cancer patient and for me, everything that we do to accelerate access to innovative cancer treatments and therapy is personal. I want people to have the same opportunity that my mom had to not just survive, but thrive after cancer. So having pharmacists work at the top of their licenses as oncology pharmacists at City Hope has been so life changing for me and for a lot of our pharmacists, it's been a game changer.

Pharmacist working in the clinic. Image Credit: © wheeljack - stock.adobe.com

For our model of health care at City of Hope, as most of our physicians would say. So, having pharmacists embedded in the clinic, making sure that patients have access to medications, innovative medications, making sure that we do democratize cancer care. Our pharmacists are working hand in hand in a multidisciplinary team, following up on patients, seeing patients, making sure that the patient gets the right medication at the right time, regardless of where they live in the community or close to the mothership here at Duarte or our Lennar Cancer Center, or any of our cancer centers in any of our market areas outside California, has been again, a game changer.

It is very energizing to see the excitement that we have when we get students enrolled in pharmacy school come and shadow our pharmacists and realize the impact of the pharmacist in oncology care has been changed. It's been elevated. It's making an impact, both for patients’ outcome and for patients’ experience.

Pharmacy Times: What makes the work of the oncology pharmacist at City of Hope unique?

Samara: So, if I could brag a little bit about our pharmacists—first of all, we have an amazing pharmacy leadership team. The leadership team is very cohesive, and the leadership team is driven by their true north, which is the mission of City of Hope, and our mission is to make sure that we transform hope into reality.

So, everybody's driving in the same direction toward that mission of improving access, making sure that all the patients are taken care of, innovation in cancer care is afforded to everybody in the cancer center and our [National Cancer Institute]–designated cancer center, or the community outside the boundaries of the cancer center.

With that being said, our leaders recruit and retain the highest talent in oncology pharmacy, so our pharmacists have the highest percentage of being oncology certified pharmacists.

Close-up view of oral chemotherapy drugs. Image Credit: © Fat Bee - stock.adobe.com

Our pharmacists participate in research at City of Hope. Our pharmacists are part of the multidisciplinary team taking care of the patient. Our pharmacists do not work within [sic] 4 walls, our pharmacists are embedded within the health care team. Every health care team at City of Hope has their own pharmacist or clinical pharmacist who sees patients. Patients are scheduled to meet with a pharmacist. Our pharmacist navigator—we launched pharmacy navigators at City of Hope—and our pharmacist navigators do take care of the patients and handhold the patients the minute they show up to the clinic, the minute they go home, and make sure that they receive the medication they need [ensuring that] their orders are in, their prior authorization is in, and even those patients who can't afford their medications, our navigators make sure that they receive the medications they need.

Our pharmacy is different because we're working at the top of our license, and we get a lot of pharmacists who are very interested in doing things outside the normal business of pharmacy, or the transactional business of pharmacy, and we promote that. Our pharmacists do IT, our pharmacists do antimicrobial stewardship work, our pharmacists are doing research, our pharmacists are doing a lot of business analytics, buying, and contracting. So, we promote diversity in pharmacy careers.