Juanita Draime ’13, Pharm.D. ’16
Wherever God Leads
Juanita Draime is in Cedarville’s inaugural pharmacy class and
will graduate with a Pharm.D. in 2016. She went to the Dream
Center with Frame on her spring break in 2013, and she is currently
organizing a team of Cedarville students to return to the Dream
Center to help not only with ongoing daily missions and medical
assistance. Long term, Draime feels God is calling her to serve
as a medical missionary in the field of pharmacy. “I have been
encouraged by faculty and staff in the School of Pharmacy who
are taking medical missions trips,” she said. “Their willingness
to serve people in all aspects of life around the world has helped
me stay focused on what I will be able to achieve after graduation.”
Though she doesn’t know specifically where her heart for
missions will take her, Draime is hoping to put her pharmacy
degree to work either alongside a missionary or in a mission
hospital. “My motto over the last year has been, ‘See a need;
fill a need.’ It reminds me that opportunities for missions are
everywhere, and everywhere I look, people need help.”
Melody Hartzler
Dayton, Ohio, and Jamaica
Dr. Melody Hartzler provides her expertise at a Dayton, Ohio,
clinic located at a federally qualified health care center — a
community-based organization that provides comprehensive
primary and preventive care to anyone, regardless of their ability
to pay or health insurance status. She estimates at least half of her
patients are uninsured. She is a clinical faculty member, which
allows her to continue practicing as a pharmacist part of the week
while teaching in the clinical setting. She spends three days a
week at the clinic and, in 2015–16, Cedarville students will begin
rotating through her site on their clinical rotations. From the
clinical expertise she has gained by practicing here, she challenges
students in her classroomwith real-world patient and medication
challenges. “Medicine and pharmacy change every day,” she said.
“If we aren’t in the trenches, we are going to be teaching outdated
material.”
In order to serve her community more efficiently, Hartzler
started a collaborative, shared medical appointment where she,
along with a resident physician and a psychologist, provide weekly
diabetes education and management for up to 10 patients at a time.
They noticed patients would come in and essentially ask the same
questions hour after hour. So they decided to build upon the shared
medical appointment model, which has been documented in
medical journals to improve outcomes for chronic disease. Adding
to the already established models, these shared appointments
include a psychologist and addressing behavioral change from an
entirely different angle. Chronic disease is often accompanied by
depression and, working collaboratively, they have been able to
better identify and address these concerns. Patients arrive together,
Hartzler and her team provide education, patients ask questions
among their peers, and then patients are individually evaluated
and receive medication adjustments as needed. The two-hour
format is more efficient for both medical staff and patients, and
Hartzler found patients — especially shy, quiet ones — benefited
from the questions more vocal peers asked. The rest of her time
in the clinic is spent providing individual medication-therapy
management services for patients with diabetes, asthma, and
chronic anticoagulation.
Hartzler’s heart for serving the underserved also extends
beyond the Dayton area. She has served with Medical Ministry
From the American inner city to Third World villages, Cedarville’s pharmacy
professors and students are intentional about serving patients who have limited
access to health care and medication.
Cedarville Magazine
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