Capitol City Pharmacy Medical Reserve Corps

The Capitol City Pharmacy Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) is a group of local volunteers in Washington, DC, focused on improving the health and safety of their community. This effort is a collaboration between the Howard University College of Pharmacy and the DC Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Administration. This MRC has been uniquely established in October 2013 to target pharmacy personnel. The goal of this MRC is to recruit and train volunteers to provide pharmacy-related functions during an emergency situation. Pharmacy related functions include but are not limited to mass vaccinations, staffing medical point-of-dispensing stations and provision of emergency supply of chronic medications. The District of Columbia currently has one other established MRC that currently has only four pharmacists, zero pharmacy students and zero pharmacy technicians on the volunteer roster. The Capitol City Pharmacy MRC will implement several strategies to increase the amount of trained volunteers who are pharmacy personnel in the District of Columbia. These strategies include engaging student pharmacy organizations to facilitate health outreach projects, Implementing a certification program in “Pharmacy Emergency Preparedness” for pharmacy personnel and facilitating our Prepare DC initiative throughout the District of Columbia.