Graduating from UConn’s School of Pharmacy in the late 1970s with a B.S. in Pharmacy, Smith was a member of the CT Society of Hospital Pharmacy and worked as a pharmacy intern at Backus and John Dempsey Hospitals during her time as a Husky. Still friends with those she met during her time at the School, Smith fondly remembers cheering on the UConn basketball and soccer teams with other pharmacy students.
After graduating from UConn, Smith completed a hospital pharmacy residency at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia before receiving her Pharm.D. degree at Virginia Commonwealth University.
With research interests in medication management in primary and patient care, Smith was first exposed to health policy while working at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP). Naturally evolving from helping patients in a clinical setting to creating training materials and developing national standards for pharmacy students at ASHP, Smith transitioned to e-health and e-prescribing at Aventis.
Early on in her career, Smith also worked as a clinical educator at the University of Tennessee and Eastern Virginia Medical School Family Residency Program. In these roles, Smith recognized the long-term consequences of unstable housing, employment, and transportation could have on a person’s health and well-being. Working in safety-net clinics with primary care physicians and nurse practitioners, Smith started her early research exploring pharmacist medication management and patient outcomes.
Smith’s research builds upon a body of evidence demonstrating that pharmacist interventions improve chronic diseases, lower total costs of healthcare, and enhance care coordination across health care team members. Now, deeply rooted in her passions for health policy, Smith’s focus is ensuring that Connecticut pharmacists are compensated by health payers for direct patient care services they’re licensed to provide, including administering vaccinations, prescribing hormonal contraceptives, testing and treating illnesses, and managing or monitoring chronic medications in between doctor visits.
As a healthcare practice transformational leader, Smith is a fearless change agent. Changing the way stakeholders think about their policies, with the ultimate goal of improving healthcare workflows and payment pathways, Smith is unafraid to advocate for her community.
In her current roles with the CT Office of Health Strategy cost growth benchmark advisory board member, and appointed member in the CT Insurance Committee’s workgroup on payment for pharmacist services, Smith remains passionately involved in health policy initiatives.
Her most recent initiative has been with the legislature’s workgroup on payment for pharmacist services, following a bill passed in 2025 to create a workgroup study, tasked with making recommendations for proposed legislation related to the compensation of pharmacists for patient health care services. Advocating in one of the six states where Medicaid and insurance companies don’t pay pharmacists for patient care services, the workgroup has already presented draft language for a proposed bill that will be discussed by the CT Insurance Committee in this 2026 legislative session.
Last month, Smith presented at the Moving Beyond Conference at the Legislative Office in Hartford, exposing the barriers to pharmacists prescribing contraceptives. Even after a 2023 Connecticut law allowing pharmacists to prescribe self-administered hormonal birth control directly to consumers, there has been no uptake of pharmacists prescribing contraception because of the lack of compensation. With the proposed bill supported by Smith and other advocates, patients will have improved access to contraception services.
This month, Smith will present to the Connecticut Pharmacists Association (CPA) on the successes and setbacks that are common with new pharmacy law implementation.
From publishing the results of a research project in Health Affairs to planning the first national conference on Medicaid payment for pharmacist clinical services, Smith believes in high-impact policy work.
It is this high-impact policy work that motivated Smith to return to UConn to inspire the next generation of health policy advocates as a professor and assistant dean. In her professor role, Smith teaches management and public health courses, a research seminar, and an elective in the business of healthcare. This elective, “Follow the Money,” has tasked students with presenting oral testimony at a public hearing on a proposed pharmacy bill. As assistant dean, Smith serves on the dean’s leadership team, focusing on opportunities to connect UConn with legislators and state agency leaders. Enhancing team-based care and exploring new payment pathways, Smith leverages faculty successes and research findings to advance pharmacy practice in Connecticut.
For those interested in the health policy field, Smith emphasizes involvement with their state pharmacist organization as a first step. By serving on the Government Affairs Committee, presenting oral or written testimony at public hearings, and attending Pharmacy Day at the Capitol, students and professionals can make their first steps to becoming healthcare advocates.
