World Immunization Week: Pharmacists Expanding Role in Community Vaccination Efforts

From corner drugstore to frontline defender, pharmacists are redefining what it means to immunize patients in the community. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, community pharmacists specifically have continued to provide protection against vaccine-preventable diseases, even amid shifting guidelines from the federal government and increases in vaccine hesitancy and misinformation.

“Since the pandemic, our authority has broadened to include dozens of vaccines in most states,” Nathan Ott, PharmD, pharmacy manager at Food City, told Drug Topics®. “We’ve even seen the rise in technician-administered vaccination, which really helps to allow pharmacists to step back and manage much larger clinics. I think while these are pretty significant bumps, the zero to pandemic in 12 years, I think that's probably our biggest.”

From tracking eligibility through state immunization registries to hosting employer vaccine clinics, pharmacists have quietly built one of the most accessible vaccination infrastructures in modern health care.

As Ott highlights in this week’s episode of the Over the Counter podcast, this didn't happen overnight—it took 3 decades of legislative groundwork, pharmacy school curriculum changes, and evolving collaborative practice agreements to get here.

Today, patients visit pharmacists twice as often as their physicians, making the pharmacy counter one of the most powerful touchpoints for closing immunization gaps in any community. Throw in the financial reality of negative reimbursements on drugs like GLP-1s, vaccination services aren’t just a public health good; they're increasingly a business necessity for pharmacies looking to stay sustainable.

The bottom line, according to Ott, is that pharmacists who invest in community relationships, physician collaboration, and ongoing education will be the connective tissue that the fractured public health system desperately needs right now.

Stay tuned for weekly podcast episodes of Over the Counter powered by Drug Topics. Check out our most recent episode with Mitch Lamb, PharmD, who discussed the ongoing challenges, and opportunities, within pharmacy accreditation, exploring how it’s a constant operational pulse rather than a one-time milestone.

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