Documenting the Evolution of Hospital and Clinical Pharmacy: Remembering the Career of Joseph Oddis
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This post is from Points, the joint blog of AIHP and the Alcohol and Drugs History Society. Points publishes original reflections about the history of drugs, medicines, alcohol, pharmacy, and their allied fields.
Joseph Oddis at the Headquarters of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists in 1984. Image courtesy of AIHP Kremers Reference Files.
A recently published tribute to Joseph A. Oddis (1928–2021), an extraordinary organizational leader in pharmacy, offers historical insights into the transformation of pharmacist education and pharmacy practice in the United States during the last four decades of the twentieth century. The entire August 15, 2021, issue of the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy (AJHP) (which is freely accessible at the preceding link) was devoted to the memory of Oddis, the first full-time Chief Executive Officer (1960–1997) of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), who died on February 24, 2021 (note: the downloadable .pdf version of this issue may be easier to read than the web version).
Oddis’s tenure at ASHP corresponded with a period of remarkable change in the education of pharmacists and in their role in patient care. In 1960, the minimum educational standard for pharmacist education was a five-year Bachelor of Science degree that emphasized the science and technology of drug products. A few colleges of pharmacy had switched to a six-year Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program for entry into the profession, and some offered the PharmD as a post-baccalaureate degree. In 2000, however, pharmacy education uniformly adopted a six-year (PharmD) degree program that focused on preparing pharmacists to be experts in the appropriate use of medicines—a concept generally referred to as clinical pharmacy.
November 6, 2025, 3:00 pm (Central): AIHP Annual Business Meeting - Save the Date! November 19, 2025, 11:00 am (Central):Pharmacy History Working Group: Lauren Thompson, Kennesaw State University. December 17, 2025, 11:00 am (Central): Pharmacy History Working Group: Beyond medical pluralism: Interactions between physician-pharmacists and other craftspeople in the Graeco-Roman world with Laurence Totelin, Cardiff University. January, 21, 2026, 11:00 am (Central):Pharmacy History Working Group: Spring Semester Welcome Back Event: A critical reading of Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls, hosted by Kelly O'Donnell, Towson Unviersity. February 18, 2026, 11:00 am (Central):Pharmacy History Working Group: Audrey Ke Zhao, UC Santa Cruz & CHSTM Research Fellow March 18, 2026, 11:00 am (Central): Pharmacy History Working Group: Ryan A. Kashanipour, University of Arizona
