Nov. 16, 2025
Pitt Community Program Meets Changing Needs
The Grace Lamsam Pharmacy Program has teamed up to serve vulnerable populations for 30 years.
TOPICS: Education | Impact | School of Pharmacy | Schools
Designs on Aging-Ready
By Strategic Communications
Grace Lamsam was a pharmacist and new faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Pharmacy when, in 1995, she launched a program that emulated community-oriented projects she had taken part in during her training in Minneapolis. At first, it largely provided free medications to people without homes. Through the years, it grew to serve more uninsured people and the working poor.
Sharon Connor, the current director of what’s known as the Grace Lamsam Pharmacy Program for the Underserved, first participated in the program as a pharmacy resident. She returned to Pitt to lead it when Lamsam joined a cloistered convent and adopted the name Sister Mary Grace.
That makes their role in interprofessional care teams even more essential—which student volunteers get to experience firsthand. Students in pharmacy, medicine and nursing all get to see what each other contributes to treating a patient.
About 150 pharmacy students and residents now participate each year, contributing to patient intake, taking patients’ blood pressure, providing medication counseling and working with interprofessional teams to serve those with few other options for health care.
“You’re not just watching things happen, you’re a part of everything. You see the students take ownership of the work, and I think that’s the key,” says Martha Ndung’u, assistant professor of pharmacy and therapeutics and codirector of the Area of Concentration in Global Health, School of Pharmacy, and leader of global heath and health equity for the Grace Lamsam Program for the Underserved. She first took part as a first-year pharmacy student at Pitt.
The program’s main site is the Birmingham Free Clinic, which opened in 1994 and first operated out of a Salvation Army homeless drop-in center on the South Side. The clinic later moved to the UPMC Mercy Community Building, where it’s now open six days a week. Connor says Mary Herbert, the Birmingham clinical director hired by Lamsam, is “the glue that keeps things running strong.”
The Grace Lamsam Program for the Underserved has also shifted over the years along with pharmacists’ expanding role in health care. They now help manage care for certain health conditions in conjunction with physicians.
That makes their role in interprofessional care teams even more essential—which student volunteers get to experience firsthand. Students in pharmacy, medicine and nursing all get to see what each other contributes to treating a patient.
“You cannot be expected to do this all on your own when there’s so much need,” Ndung’u says. “Understanding that, you’re going to problem-solve in that team to do the best you can for every single patient that you serve.”
The Grace Lamsam Pharmacy Program for the Underserved*
- $750,000 approximate value in medication provided free of charge
- 6,000 prescriptions to patients in need
- 3,000 pharmacist and pharmacy student volunteer hours
- 3,000 approximate number of patients served at clinics, shelters and drop-in centers
- 150 pharmacy students and residents engaged
*Recent yearly totals