ASHP Mourns Death of Past President Sara J. White

ASHP Past President Sara J. White, an inspirational pharmacy icon who changed how the pharmacy profession nurtures future generations of leaders, died Sept. 28, 2024. She was 79 years old.

White got involved in ASHP as a student and remained a member throughout her life. She chaired the ASHP House of Delegates for three years and served as ASHP’s president in 1996–1997. White was the 2006 recipient of the Harvey A.K. Whitney Lecture Award, an ASHP fellow (1999), and an honorary ASHP member (2019). She participated in many of ASHP’s advisory bodies and served as chair of the Women in Pharmacy Leadership Steering Committee, Organizational Structure and Policy Task Force, Commission on Goals, and Special Interest Group on Administrative Pharmacy Practice.

“Sara was a dear friend and a source of inspiration to me for many years,” said ASHP CEO Paul W. Abramowitz. “It was a privilege to know her, and it is impossible to overstate her influence on pharmacy. It was an honor to serve on the ASHP Board of Directors with Sara, which provided a unique opportunity to witness, up close, her commitment to our patients and our profession. Sara’s foresight on leadership and her many years of service to ASHP and the ASHP Foundation contribute to an enduring legacy that will continue to move pharmacy practice forward for generations to come.”

White began her career as a staff pharmacist in her home state of Oregon in 1968. She spent 20 years in leadership positions at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) and 10 years as chief pharmacist at Stanford Health Services in California before retiring in 2003.

As she looked ahead for new opportunities to focus her energy and passion for the profession, White seized on a suggestion from Henri R. Manasse Jr., ASHP’s CEO at the time, to apply to the ASHP Foundation’s scholar-in-residence program.

White’s research findings, published in AJHP in 2005, highlighted the need to address an impending pharmacy leadership crisis. This work launched a new phase of her career as an expert in leadership development whose influence on pharmacy education and training helped ensure a robust pipeline of future pharmacy leaders.

“She became a leading thinker on the topic of leadership in hospital and health-system practice, especially focused on the role of women in pharmacy leadership roles,” Manasse said. “Moreover, the leadership topic became an important staple of her many invited presentations, where she challenged the audiences not only to take this topic seriously but begin to create leadership opportunities in all practice settings. This is her lasting legacy.”

Stephen J. Allen, former CEO of the ASHP Foundation, said that following White’s time as scholar in residence, she motivated the foundation’s team to develop new leadership programs for students, new practitioners, mid-career pharmacists, and executive leaders. White was a longstanding faculty member in the foundation’s Pharmacy Leadership Academy and an active participant in the Visiting Leaders Program, both of which remain vital to the foundation’s leadership agenda.

“She challenged us, assumed a leadership role in program development, served as a faculty leader, and generously contributed her personal financial resources to fund a range of foundation leadership programs,” Allen said. Through her participation in these and other initiatives, White also taught, mentored, and established friendships with many of today’s pharmacy leaders.

White continuously sought to improve her leadership portfolio, and she embraced technology to reach a wider audience. She was featured in several of ASHP’s pharmacy leadership podcasts on topics such as mentorship and tools for success as a leader. Through a project with the ASHP Foundation, White developed a series of online video interviews that captured the professional journeys of influential pharmacy leaders.

As part of that series, White sat for a 2013 interview conducted by Jennifer Tryon, a then-emerging pharmacy leader who now serves on the ASHP Board of Directors. White came into Tryon’s life when she was a young resident searching for a leadership mentor.

“Sara coached that the time to think about our legacy is not at the end of our career, but rather throughout,” said Tryon, who is now the chief pharmacy officer at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan. “She modeled this in every aspect of her life and career, investing in the profession by developing leadership skills in others.”

Their relationship grew into a deep and enduring friendship.

“Over the years, we became family,” Tryon said. “She helped me navigate through some of life’s most challenging hurdles — what Sara affectionately called sticky wickets.”

Sara Jane White was born April 22, 1945, in Enterprise, Oregon, and raised in Union, a small town surrounded by the Blue and Wallowa mountains of eastern Oregon. Her father, Vern Emery White, worked for a bank, and her mother, Elizabeth Amy (Forsythe) White, was a nurse. In high school, White served on the student council and as a class officer. She was the valedictorian of her senior class, and her peers voted her most likely to succeed.

In a 2016 oral history she recorded with retired ASHP Deputy Executive Vice President William A. Zellmer, White credited her mother — who was influenced by experiences with penicillin as a wonder drug during World War II — with suggesting a career in pharmacy.

White earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmacy from Oregon State University in 1968. She worked for two years as a staff pharmacist, first at the University of Oregon Medical Center and then at the Emanuel Hospital in Portland.

During a summer road trip, White traveled to The Ohio State University to learn about the school’s combined master’s program and residency in hospital pharmacy. She started that program in 1970, completing a residency in clinical hospital pharmacy at The Ohio State University Hospitals and Clinics and receiving a master’s degree in hospital pharmacy management in 1972.

At the time White was a resident, the hospital pharmacy department was led by Clifton J. Latiolais, who had implemented unit-dose dispensing, IV admixture services, and other practices that were highly advanced at the time.

“We worked as clinical pharmacists on the units, which really intrigued me,” White recalled in the oral history. “Ohio State at that point was, in my view, very progressive. The pharmacy technicians administered medications under the auspices of the clinical pharmacists on the unit.”

In 1972, White left Ohio State to take a position as assistant director of pharmacy at KUMC. She was recruited by KUMC pharmacy chief and future ASHP President Harold N. Godwin, who had previously worked as an assistant pharmacy director for Latiolais in Ohio.

Godwin said White helped implement unit-dose dispensing and establish clinical pharmacy services at KUMC. White also worked closely with the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy, where she held a faculty appointment. Godwin said White was adept at managing her leadership and academic roles as the two of them worked together to create an innovative clinical learning environment for students and residents.

“Sara was an incredible partner for many years,” Godwin said. “She was always planning and thinking of the future.”

Godwin described White as a creative thought leader and notable influencer in pharmacy. She was also a mentor to dozens of pharmacists who enrolled in KUMC’s combined pharmacy residency and master’s degree program.

The program’s graduates include Bruce E. Scott, who began his own leadership career at KUMC and later served as ASHP president.

Scott said he was fortunate to know White over the years as a teacher, boss, colleague, mentor, and friend. He called her a role model for excellence in leadership who was known for her “get it done” philosophy.

“Her actions inspired me, and many others, to give back to the profession and help others, because she gave so much of herself,” Scott said. “I think the crown jewel of her legacy is the countless leaders (small ‘l’ and big ‘L’) she helped develop through her teaching, preceptorship, role modeling, and mentorship. She never declined an opportunity to help leaders or provide a perspective on a leadership question or issue.”

White became KUMC’s associate director of pharmacy in 1975, and she remained with the medical center for 17 years. She held University of Kansas School of Pharmacy faculty appointments throughout her time at KUMC, and she was the school’s director of clinical pharmacy education from 1977 to 1992. White was named a tenured professor of pharmacy practice in 1982.

She served a term as president of both the Kansas Society of Hospital Pharmacists (1979–1980) and the Greater Kansas City Society of Hospital Pharmacists (1975–1976). She was named an honorary member of the Kansas Society of Hospital Pharmacists in 1992.

White departed KUMC in 1992 to take the position of director of pharmacy for Stanford Health Services in California, fulfilling a personal goal of leading a pharmacy department.

One of her first priorities was to transform the pharmacy department’s paper recordkeeping process into a computerized system. She also oversaw the shift to centralized IV admixture services and helped her staff bring back Stanford’s pharmacy residency programs, which had been discontinued for financial reasons. White served as program director for the hospital’s ASHP-accredited residency in hospital pharmacy administration from 1993 to 1999, and she mentored about four dozen residents during her time at Stanford.

At that time, and throughout the 1990s, White was deeply involved in ASHP’s governance. One of her priorities during her presidential year was to support key action items on ASHP’s leadership agenda. These included raising awareness among health-system decision-makers about pharmacists’ vital role in patient care; building strategic partnerships to advance pharmacists’ role in the medication-use process; and responding quickly and proactively to issues that affect the profession. White’s presidential duties also included helping to identify a successor to Joseph P. Oddis, who retired as ASHP CEO in 1997.

And, through her service on the ASHP Board of Directors and as chair of the House of Delegates, White helped shape the organization’s stance on ethics, prescribing authority for pharmacists, medication errors, diversification of the membership, the PharmD as the entry-level degree for the profession, and other issues of the era.

After taking early retirement from Stanford, White began a two-decade partnership with Omnicell Inc., serving on the company’s board of directors and chairing its committee on governance. In her oral history, White described the work for Omnicell as a fascinating and enjoyable intellectual challenge.

“We were honored to have Sara join the Omnicell Board of Directors,” said Randall Lipps, the organization’s CEO and founder. “Her deep knowledge of pharmacy practice was instrumental in the growth of Omnicell and advancing the role technology and intelligence could play in transforming medication management.”

Although White intensified her focus on leadership soon after leaving Stanford, she had been writing on the topic since the 1980s. During her long career, she authored or coauthored more than 150 written works, many of which appeared in AJHP and other pharmacy publications. White’s Harvey A.K. Whitney lecture, published in AJHP in 2006, encourages pharmacists at all levels of practice to recognize and embrace opportunities, big and small, to be leaders.

White was also a writer and editor for ASHP’s influential Letters book series. Each volume contains words of wisdom in the form of personal essays relevant to the profession’s leaders, women, residents, young pharmacists, rising stars, preceptors, or retirees.

Susan A. Cantrell, CEO of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, got to know White when they collaborated on the first book in the Letters series.

“I feel privileged to have been among the scores of pharmacists she inspired,” Cantrell said about her friend. “Working with Sara was a fun experience and also an important learning experience. She was focused, driven, and committed to exceeding expectations. I have no doubt that hundreds of pharmacists will benefit from Sara’s work and leadership in the future, as I have for many years.”

In 2015, White was named chair of ASHP’s steering committee on women in pharmacy leadership, which was charged with developing recommendations to increase the number of female pharmacy leaders. She was a coauthor of Women in Pharmacy Leadership: The Journey Continues, a 2022 AJHP report that describes and builds on the steering committee’s work.

Many who knew White said she took special pride in helping other women see themselves as leaders in the profession.

“She was always there to celebrate my successes and help me navigate through many challenges,” said ASHP Past President Rebecca S. Finley. She and White began their decades-long friendship in the 1980s, when they crossed paths at state and local pharmacy meetings. They also met at ASHP’s national meetings, where White was a recognizable standout in her trademark red jacket.

“Sara ... encouraged me to pursue new opportunities, and, especially, to stay engaged with my state hospital pharmacy association and ASHP,” Finley said.

White received many awards in addition to those bestowed by ASHP. Her recognitions include the KUMC Harold N. Godwin Leadership Legacy Award (2005); the Ohio State University (OSU) School of Pharmacy Jack L. Beal Post Baccalaureate Award (2000); the OSU Hospital Clifton J. Latiolais Award (1993); The John W. Webb Lecture Award (1991); and the Kansas Society of Hospital Pharmacists Harold N. Godwin Lecture Award and Hospital Pharmacist of the Year award (1985 and 1981, respectively).

White was preceded in death by her parents, Vern and Elizabeth Amy (Forsythe) White.

The ASHP Foundation asks those who wish to make a contribution in White’s name to consider donating to the Sara J. White Leadership Fund.