Vincentian Mission a Priority for College of Pharmacy Dean

Dean Robert Mangione of the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences wants his school to be known for "competent, compassionate health care with a devotion to uncompromised excellence." During a recent interview with St. John's Monthly, Dean Mangione stressed the concept of compassion and noted that it's a theme that runs through nearly everything they do at the college.

The connection between research and practical care is not always easily recognized, Dean Mangione observed, but a closer look reveals the relationship. Often research scientists work to better the effectiveness of drugs that will ease patients' suffering. At the center of it all, he stressed, is education.

"Not only educating future health care providers, not only educating future practitioners, academicians and researchers but also the manner in which we deliver the education," is key, he said. "We're always striving to improve on that as well."

The area of urban health care is a major point of interest, Dean Mangione observed. "We want to be recognized as leaders for the poor and indigent. He added that when considering St. John's College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences he thinks of St. John's first. "That's what distinguishes us as a college of pharmacy."

He added, "We must make sure that the Vincentian charism is part of everything we do." Practical applications of that charism include asking students to reach out to the disadvantaged, "trying to determine what are the barriers to pharmaceutical care that patients face on a day-to-day basis and (ask) how can we break through those barriers."

Dean Mangione encourages his students who are doing clinical rotations to learn not only what the textbook tells them about a patients' disease but also to try and understand how it affects a patient's life. He wants his students to ask themselves how they can help improve their patients' lives and, by extension, make the world a better place.

The College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences has a special relationship with the poor, Dean Mangione observed. "I ask our faculty, wherever possible, to think about the marginalized. Not that we exclude others but we must ask what can we do to bring them closer to health care." He added, "We ask them to research these areas, ask the tough questions and come up with answers."

Dean Mangione discussed several faculty members who volunteer their time including one who works part-time with a mobile health clinic that visits homeless shelters and others who provide pharmaceutical care at a clinic in Uniondale that cares for uninsured patients, no questions asked. "Forty million Americans are uninsured. How do they get the care that they need? The faculty, by volunteering their time, is making a difference there."

"We do that because of St. John's," Dean Mangione stressed. "We must do these things because we are who we are."