Rural Pharmacy
Elizabeth Briand
Every morning, the phones start ringing, patients start walking through the door, and the hard, nonstop work of saving lives in rural Appalachia begins at St. Mary’s Faith Pharmacy in Wise, VA.
Launched in July 2024, St. Mary’s Faith Pharmacy is Appalachia’s first free and charitable pharmacy, providing lifesaving medications and a full complement of preventive services to residents who are in desperate need of high-quality, accessible care.
“I’ve seen patients ration doses of insulin,” said Jennifer Hammons, PharmD, director of pharmacy services. “I’ve seen patients choose between eating and buying their medications, and unfortunately, I have seen far too many die without access to needed medications.”
As part of a larger clinic program called the Health Wagon, Hammons said they hope to bridge that gap.
For example, being able to access lifesaving medications, such as insulin, can provide hope to those who feel forgotten.
Hammons said it is her life’s mission to help the people in this region.
Also known as “coal country,” the communities that the Health Wagon and St. Mary’s Faith Pharmacy serve have faced an onslaught of misfortune in recent decades, starting with massive job losses and a population that is getting older and sicker.
A shared past
Hammons knows well the lives of the people she cares for each day. Born and raised in southwest Virginia, Hammons was a young, poor mother of three when she brought her own family to the Health Wagon for care.
“I’ve lived that life, when I had no health insurance and I had to pick and choose which antibiotic I could afford,” she said.
Her life changed, though, when the Health Wagon’s president took notice of her.
“She took me under her wing and told me I was too smart to stay home,” Hammons said.
The Health Wagon leaders helped her enroll in pharmacy school, paying for her tuition, books, and computer. They told her that together, they would start the community’s first free pharmacy. Fourteen years later, St. Mary’s Faith Pharmacy opened its doors.
The pharmacy was a natural next step for the Health Wagon, a program that began more than four decades ago when a medical missionary from Massachusetts named Sister Bernadette Kenny came to the region and began providing free medical care from her Volkswagen Beetle. Sister Kenny and her VW became known as “the Health Wagon,” a name that stuck as Sister Kenny recruited others to her cause and began to build what is today a primary source of care for nearly 11,000 patients each year.
Total care
Since July 1, 2024, the small nonprofit pharmacy, which does its own fundraising, has provided more than $2.2 million in pharmaceutical support. It is staffed solely by Hammons and a pharmacy technician who runs St. Mary’s Pharmacy Connect program, which provides patients with access to medications at no cost through partnerships with pharmaceutical manufacturers, other nonprofit organizations, and discount programs.
Hammons’ goal is to help people better manage their health for the long-term—and that includes chronic disease management as well.
“Preventive services don’t exist here,” said Hammons. “[Patients] come to us when it’s an emergency, and by that time, we’re playing catch up.”
To address those needs, the pharmacy provides preventive screenings, telehealth consultations, point-of-care testing, deprescribing services, fecal immunochemical test colon cancer screenings, weight loss therapy, oral cancer screenings, and more. They also have an advanced diabetes center.
In a region where adults aged 35 to 64 years die at a rate five times higher than the state average, this type of care management does not just change lives; it saves them.
“We’re never going to get better if we’re okay with where we are right now,” she said. “It’s never going to get any better if we don’t do something.” ■