The Unsung Heroes of Healthcare: "Community pharmacists are maybe the most trusted and most accessible health care provider. They're unsung heroes in our communities but rich with knowledge." - Dr. Taylor Reed

We shine a spotlight on a vital resource in Central Ohio: the Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio.

For 15 years, this nonprofit has been dedicated to providing free, life-saving prescription medications to those who can’t afford them.

Executive Director Dr. Taylor Reed joins the conversation to share his unique career path, the inspiring origin story of the charitable pharmacy, and how the organization serves the community. Especially older adults and those with chronic health needs.

We’ll explore the challenges and partnerships that make this work possible, recent changes in Ohio law that allow even more donated medications to reach those in need, and how the pharmacy works hand-in-hand with patients, healthcare providers, and other social service organizations to address the full spectrum of patient wellness.

If you or someone you know is struggling with medication costs, or if you’re interested in how you can help, this episode is packed with insights, resources, and ways to get involved.

Here are 3 key takeaways for healthcare and community professionals:

The Charitable Pharmacy was born from a unique Columbus-style public-private partnership that included city, county, all four major health systems, faith organizations, and business leaders. This cross-sector approach catalyzed innovative and lasting solutions for medication access in our region.

Serving over 1,600 individuals annually, the pharmacy provides not just free medication but a holistic support model. Patients often face multiple chronic conditions, and pharmacists deliver ongoing education, coaching, and direct connections to broader health and social services.

From state law changes enabling medication donations to partnerships with organizations like the Mid-Ohio Food Collective, the Charitable Pharmacy is addressing the social drivers of health, ensuring patients have food, housing, and transportation, not just medication.

If you like this episode, please let us know. We appreciate the feed back, and your support of offset costs of producing the podcast!

Moments

00:00 Pharmacist's Career Journey

05:18 Launch of a Charitable Pharmacy

08:41 Complex Pharmacy Supply Chain Explained

09:43 Recycling Unused Medicine Program

13:04 Supporting Asset-Limited Employed Individuals

17:27 Collaborative Healthcare Connections Ohio

22:02 Community Support Through One Door

24:33 Addressing Health via Nutrition Access

29:31 Expanding Health Care Capacity

33:28 Community Pharmacy & Pharmacist Awareness

We would love to hear from you.

Give us your feedback, or suggest a topic, by leaving us a voice message.

Email us at hello@lookingforwardourway.com.

Find us on Bluesky and Facebook.

Please review our podcast on Google!

And of course, everything can be found on our website, Looking Forward Our Way.

Recorded in Studio C at 511 Studios. A production of Circle 270 Media® Podcast Consultants.

Copyright 2026 Carol Ventresca and Brett Johnson

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

The views and opinions expressed by the experts interviewed on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcast hosts or any affiliated organizations. The information provided in these interviews is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with qualified professionals for specific advice or information related to their individual circumstances. The podcast host and producers do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information provided by the experts interviewed. Listener discretion is advised.

Mentioned in this episode:

Listener Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the experts interviewed on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the podcast hosts or any affiliated organizations. The information provided in these interviews is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with qualified professionals for specific advice or information related to their individual circumstances. The podcast host and producers do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of any information provided by the experts interviewed. Listener discretion is advised.

We are looking forward our way. Hi, this is Brett. There are many in our community who can't afford medical care and life saving medicine. Central Ohio has many avenues of support, but information is not always readily available. Today we're going to highlight one significant resource. It's called the Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio. For 15 years they've served those most in need. Let's welcome the executive director, Dr.

Taylor Reed. Thanks for joining us.

Hello, good afternoon, good morning.

We're so glad to see you. It took a little bit of finagling to get our schedules together, but we're really very happy and thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

Before we actually start talking about the charitable pharmacy, we want to talk about your career path. How you got into this, where you were going, where you were heading and how you ended up at the charitable pharmacy. And you, after obtaining your pharmacy degree, you actually had experience in a lot of different pharmacies, lots of different venues. That had to be an interesting experience. Tell us a little more.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Carol and Brett, it's great to be with you today. I am a pharmacist by training. I did my pharmacy studies and earned my doctorate degree at Ohio Northern University and then went on to do my residency work in community practice at the University of Iowa. I had a career in community pharmacy and really enjoyed the connection it built with communities and neighborhoods. Working at my career took over several states and then we had the pandemic. It was the time when all healthcare providers were rallied to the cause. We're superheroes in the moment.

We kept communities alive. And it was coming out of that that I got a call to learn more about the charitable pharmacy. They needed an executive director. They wanted someone who understood how to run a pharmacy as a business, but also could be an advocate for the faith based mission that it represents of providing medicine to people who can't afford. And I feel blessed and honored to get to lead that today where we're helping people who can't afford their medicine gain access for free.

I'm going to ask a question again. Already off the rails here. So your degree is in community pharmacy.

It's a Doctorate of pharmacy practice.

Okay. So I always thought a doctorate of pharmacy was a doctorate of Pharmacy. There's actually like little different avenues.

Well, you can specialize and do additional training. So there are residency and fellowship options in a number of different fields and specialties. Almost all practicing pharmacists today hold a doctorate of pharmacy practice.

Right.

And then they may go on and specialize after that, the degree is both. How do medicines work mechanistically from the chemical structure and understanding the physiology of the body and the pathophysiology of disease states. But part of that education path is also learning how to convey how those medicines work and why we might choose one treatment option versus another. How do you convey that to a healthcare team? And also how do you convey that to the patient and their family so that they're able to get the most out of those medicines?

Well, as I mentioned, you know, I love my team of pharmacists and I have to admit they're mostly female and more than once I have gotten a prescription and they've looked at me and going, you're allergic to this. So I don't know that this is what you should be doing. Let me check back with your nurse practitioner who's also a female. So it is a very important step in the, in the spectrum of medical care.

I always say if there's medicine involved, a pharmacist should be there too.

Right.

And so there are pharmacists embedded at every stage of the medication delivery process of the drug distribution supply chain and on the front lines in the community.

Right, right. Great. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, thank you. So the pharma charitable. Excuse me, the charitable pharmacy began back in 2010. It was determined that it was a critical need for life saving prescription medication at no cost to those unable to afford them. Services are free of charge to Franklin county residents. Let's talk about how the pharmacy came about. Who were the original supporters and donors? There had to be hurdles. There always is in anything you create.

And maybe talk about those leaps that leap if there was only one or a few to make this reality.

Sure. We're lucky to be celebrating our 15th anniversary this year. And, and when I think back to and understand the history of how it began, it was a roundtable at the time called Access Healthcare Columbus. As we do many projects here in central Ohio. It was built, we were thinking in the public private partnership kind of style where we brought all the players around a table. That was our government partners from both the city of Columbus and Franklin county, also our healthcare leaders from the four major healthcare systems, the faith community, big business and small business leaders all coming together, understanding this problem. People can't afford their medicine. And when you can't afford your medicine or preventive health care, you put it off until it becomes an emergency that takes you to the emergency room.

It's a very expensive way to get care. The style of care there is triage and someone sent home. But if you leave with a prescription as the, as the solution to whatever took you to the ER and you can't afford it, you go home empty handed, that problem doesn't get better and that patient's going to end up back in the emergency room. And so that was the problem that the community was grappling with, is this high number of hospitalizations and readmissions. And so the brainstorming started with how do we solve that? And Charitable Pharmacy was just one of those big ideas. Could we crowd raise, could we pull together our resources across this community to build a pharmacy, a building structure? Could we hire professional talent, the clinical pharmacists and certified pharmacy technicians that would make that happen and then purchase medicines or get them donated and give them away? Because many generic drugs are not all that expensive. Many manufacturers have programs to support access to their brand name products. And so could we do that at scale for the community? And that was the idea that got Charitable Pharmacy started.

We aren't the oldest in the country, so there were some folks we were able to borrow ideas from and learn from along the way. But we have grown to be the largest. And it's because of that continued support from all of those partners, many of whom are still at the table today, that we're continuing strong these last 15 years and looking forward to growth in the future.

If you watch the commercials for our huge medical systems in this town, you'd think they all hated each other. But they do really work together in many situations. So we are really, really lucky to have the medical systems. We have the other thing too. In what you said, they sat down 15 or so years ago. That was 10 years before the pandemic, correct? Oh my gosh. If they hadn't, your clients really would have been in a bad way. So thank goodness they had the foresight to do that so long ago.

I think it's a real blessing that our hospital systems work together and that the community rallies together. And I think that's how we're able to come up with such innovative but also long lasting solutions.

Right.

The charitable pharmacy is just one example.

That's a good point too. The fact that it's not that you are only 15 years old, but you are 15 years old and with a strong foundation to keep going.

Yes, ma' am.

Because it's not something that can come and go as people please. Acquiring medication is not as simplistic as it sounds. It's not like going to the local Walgreens and picking up aspirin. You know, there is a lot to go. The normal pharmacy, you order a box of this and you bundle and you have a bundle of that. No big deal. There are a lot of steps to ensure that you have the medications you need. And there was also, I think, a recent change in Ohio law to make that a little bit easier.

Tell us the medications that you are really looking at and how this process began and now how it's grown, how you've learned through this.

You're absolutely right, Carol. Our supply chain is very complex. In fact, we keep seven discrete, separate sources of inventory in our pharmacy to build together our formulary or list of drugs we'll make available to the community. It all got started with getting medicines donated from long term care facilities. So these are blister pack cards that are left over when someone passes away, maybe changes medicine or discharges home. That medicine can't go to someone else in that facility and it used to land in a landfill, but it's paid for and can come to us and be put back to use. We have a robust team of volunteers and many groups that come together to help sort those and get them organized in a way that we can use them in the pharmacy. Beyond those donated medicines from the nursing homes, we're able to also get brand name drugs from manufacturers through their patient assistance programs and doing that in bulk.

And so we work with some partners to make that happen. And then we also are able to work with charitable wholesalers and get a discounted price or free options for medicine that might be short dated, still good, but not able to be used in the traditional supply chain. After that, I still have to purchase a lot of medicine to be able to fill the need and deliver a full service pharmacy to this community. And so with that in mind, we went to the state legislature and worked on a fix to be able to expand what we're able to offer. Maybe you have unused medicine in your medicine cabinet or you know, someone who's had a loved one pass away. What if those medicines could come to us as well and be put back to use? And so that was the change that happened about two years ago now where I'm able to receive any unused and unexpired medicine, so long as it's not a controlled substance and put it back to use. And so every day we have families across the Columbus region bringing us unused insulin or unused inhalers from where a loved one couldn't breathe and has passed away. They're able to put that back to use and it gives the gift of life.

And breath to someone else.

And you were talking about your volunteers who are many of them trained in pharmacy so they know what to look for. You're talking about medications that have been blister packed or are in a safe environment and also haven't expired. You've got your team knows what to look for.

Absolutely.

So we have to shout out to.

Them, our team, I wouldn't be able to do it without them. We're very lucky to have a full time paid professional staff that's got several pharmacists, many pharmacy technicians and then some support folks that help make our mission come to life. Those pharmacists are trained in looking at those medicines to make sure that they are the right medicines to deliver. We still need a high quality, high service pharmacy. There's no room for expired medicine even in a charitable setting. But as you say, also many of our volunteers are retired pharmacists, retired healthcare providers across a number of different professions that help and want to give back in this way. And then sometimes we get companies and teams coming out as a team building opportunity and my pharmacists oversee that process. So we give a bit of guidance and help the team be set up for success.

So your patient, or I should say, let's talk about your patients, who's eligible and then, I mean, how many do you serve? Patients tend to be younger, older or just kind of across the board.

Sure, Brett. We'll serve anyone in Franklin county who lives in the county and by income and household size is earning at 300% of the federal poverty line or less each year. We serve between 16 and 1700 individuals. And when we qualify someone and gather their information and take on care, my team thinks about it as a journey. So there's an introduction and getting them started on their medicine. But we agree to serve them for 12 months and then we'll renew annually if needed. Our average patient stays with us for three and a half years. And so I see it as this journey with a patient.

But also part of our organization's journey is to serve more people across this community. The United Way has been a great partner and recently published some data around a community they're calling alis. Individuals who are asset limited, income constrained and employed folks who are hard working as much of this community is, and still struggling to get by. And that's who the charitable pharmacy patient is. When I think about the age of our patients, they range from 2 years old to 92 years old, but they do skew a bit older. About half of our patients are over 65, about 3/4 are 50 years old or older. And as you think about who might take medicine, typically it is an older audience where diseases compile and we're managing chronic diseases at that point.

When you're looking at the patients that you're serving, what are the medical issues that many of them are facing and how do your medications support their needs? Are there things you can't do? Things you can't do?

Sure. As I was saying, I think charitable pharmacy's mission is really about chronic disease management. First and foremost, we're providing medicine. But a pharmacist's education is more than just selecting the medicines and distributing them, but helping educate, counsel and coach a patient to move towards a better health. So when I think about the disease state breakdown, nine out of 10 patients have high blood pressure or heart disease. Six out of 10 have diabetes. Half are struggling with mental illness and that includes depression or anxiety. A third take inhalers and are struggling with airway disease like asthma or copd.

Do you find that the patients, I mean, it sounds like they have more than one issue and I'm surprised about the mental health. It didn't even hit me that you would be dealing with mental health medication.

There are no controlled substances that we're dealing with.

Right.

And so when I think of controlled substances, that's often very strong pain medicines or anxiety medicines. But there are a range of other options that are not controlled. Our patients are complex. My average patient takes eight medicines on a daily basis. I was reviewing a case yesterday with one of our graduate interns. That patient takes 30 pills every day.

That's a meal.

It's a lot.

It's a meal. Exactly.

And is managing five chronic disease states. And so when I approach a case, when my team is taking on a patient, we really strive to be a partner in their health journey, to walk alongside them. And that's why I think about the first step is providing medicine, helping get them adherent to that medicine and then it's extending a journey with them where there's education layered in coaching and walking with them towards a better health. We might reasonably think that those of us who are healthy take less medicine. And so sometimes dose reduction or discontinuation of medicine is a byproduct of the work that we do towards giving someone a hand up towards better health.

When you're reviewing those cases, are you working with their healthcare provider also?

We work with the patient and the provider. I'm a believer in the team based approach.

Right. Because it's an issue for older adults that they tend to shop their doctors, shop their medications, and then suddenly they are, they're taking a dozen meds that could be working against each other.

They can. And that's the brilliance of having pharmacists engaged and bringing their clinical knowledge to the table to be a partner for our patients.

So it seems that the pharmacy is in need of close connections in the medical community. We kind of established that because of the genesis of the charitable pharmacy. Which organizations refer patients to you and in are there organizations or maybe medical practices that you in turn refer patients to ensure that they have primary care?

We work with just about all the healthcare community here in central Ohio. That means we've got patients from all four major health systems and the many hospitals and clinics that are underneath each of those. We also work with the federally qualified health centers or FQHCs, and many of their patients join us. And still we work with free clinics where patients maybe aren't connected with a steady primary care physician receiving care at a free clinic and finding us. That way, when patients arrive to us, if they don't have what I'll call a primary medical home, then we're going to work with them to help connect them in. And so those relationships with the four major health systems with the FQHCs are reciprocal, where we're often connecting patients back in. And I let our patients guide that process because healthcare really is personal and where each of us might feel at home is different. And so that invites a conversation.

And we do have choice here. And even my patients who can't afford should get the dignity of choice. And where do they feel comfortable getting care? But it isn't the togetherness of the healthcare community and the robustness of it in Franklin county that we're able to be a partner and player.

So it looks like there are other organizations across the country like the charitable pharmacy you had mentioned. You had connections that when it was first started, that helped to formulate the structure of the organization. There are a couple that I found online. The national association of Free and Charitable Clinics is one and another nonprofit called Direct Relief Health. How do those organizations play a role in the development of your program? Or are they doing some cutting edge things that you can mimic?

That's a great question. Direct Relief is one of our partners that helps organize manufacturer patient assistance programs to be a source for some of the brand name drugs that we provide. And so they are a huge contributor to how we make our mission happen. The national association of Free and Charitable Clinics. I get the pleasure and honor of serving on their board of directors. And when I think about coming together with that group, it's about advocacy for the free clinic and charitable pharmacy sector across this country. Because while we're lucky to have a solution here in central Ohio, not every community has this. But one in four Americans told Gallup Poll last year they can't afford their medicine.

This problem exists everywhere, coast to coast. And so if we can be part of organizing in an association for advocacy, I find that valuable at a local level. We pull many great ideas from partners across the country about how to better partner with free clinics, how to deliver solutions that are meaningful and borrow those best practices and put them into use. I don't want to reinvent the wheel. And when I think about doing care that way, free care can definitely be high quality care and we're blessed to get to deliver that here at home.

It seems that having those connections with other professionals in your field particularly is, as you said, all the ideas bubble up and there is nothing wrong with mimicking or doing what other groups do because as you said, we don't need to keep reinventing the wheel.

Yes, ma' am.

It works. This works.

So.

You'Re taking care of central Ohio. Are there other organizations here doing the same thing?

Well, we're blessed. There are many free clinics. Our FQHC partners here in Columbus are great to work with. And there are a lot of innovators at the four health systems at Ohio State University, Wexner Medical center at Ohio Health System, at Mount Carmel, at Nationwide Children's Hospital. We are blessed with a lot of great ideas in the healthcare arena here in Columbus. I feel lucky that we get to lift that up on a national stage, learn from those folks and bring it to life here in Columbus.

Yeah, well, Columbus has been wrestling with issues in our inner city core neighborhoods for years. Can you give us some details on how some partnerships began to address this and how the pharmacy is enhancing their success?

Brett, it takes a lot of hustle for a family who is struggling to make ends meet. I understand why someone might put off preventive care when and how that might not be their top priority. When I think about what we can do as a community and how partnerships begin, I think we can do better to wrap services around those who are struggling. And so when I think about a recent partnership, the Franklin county commissioners have the one Door project where they're bringing many resources around the same table at One Door in inside the courthouse downtown. And Charitable pharmacy is one of those. But that creates a one stop shop that Saves somebody a trip, helps them get all the services they might need and exposure to ones that maybe they don't need today, but they can have in the back of their mind when they do need them. And in that way, we can give this community a hand up so that folks aren't struggling and life can be a bit easier.

As you said, it's good to repeat what is working. And there are a lot of organizations that are trying that sort of one stop shop notion. Are there other groups that you're reaching out to or anybody else that's trying to mimic that model? I may be on a. I think.

Many groups are thinking that way. I'm lucky to gather with many funded partners from the United Way, with other health and human services nonprofits through the Human Services Chamber here in Franklin County. And I think the leaders across the entire sector are coming together to say, how do we think about the whole person when the community information exchange comes to life in the next year or two? I think it will create a conduit where we can share information better. But I think those are core elements of gathering information, sharing and thinking about the patient at the center of our care and doing work together to wrap our services around them.

And it would seem too, that the medical community is doing a better job of recognizing that there's more than just a stethoscope and a prescription involved in that individual's life. They're really looking at issues outside. Are they housed well? Do they have food stability, all those kinds of things? Are they safe in terms of needing grab bars or getting rid of throw rugs or whatever those issues are? But I think they're looking at that bigger picture.

Absolutely. And in the healthcare community, we talk about those as the social drivers of health and thinking about the holistic whole person needs that someone's going to have. As important as medicine is, if I don't think about how a patient eats well, Right. I'm going to have a very hard time managing any metabolic disease state, including high blood pressure, including high cholesterol, including diabetes. And so we've one partnership we've built out is with the Mid Ohio Food Collective, where we created pharmacy access cards and set patients up to access the 25 produce markets where they can have access to unlimited fresh fruits and vegetables all across Franklin county without needing to bring all their identifying information with them. And they can just scan a card and be waved in to shop. And it looks like the front end of many grocery stores.

Right.

But they leave with a full basket of what they need. They're able to care for their family, eat healthy and well. And that's a game changer. When I then think about how do I manage the chronic disease states that they're grappling with and what my long term goal is about closing the health equity gaps and the disparities that exist in the health equity data for our patients. And so it's in not only addressing the medication needs of the patient and layering in education, but then wrapping those services around and making sure all their social determinant of health needs are met that we can maybe get them to a healthier state.

As you said, Central Ohio is blessed in terms of not only do we have resources, but they all actually do work together. So, so a shout out to the Mid Ohio Food Collective. We just did a podcast with them recently on Senior Hunger and we talked about the Farm program, P H A R M program, and it would seem that there is so much information available. One of the goals of this podcast is to identify an issue and get those resources out there. And audience, as we always say, we will have resources on the webpage when we post this particular podcast. Taylor, tell us about your role as that information conduit. You have the resources for patients and the community at large. How does the audience get this information? You know, they just can't trip over it the way I did.

As I explained to you when I was a caregiver, how do you tap into everything that people need, whether it's the individual, their family, their providers?

I think it's so important that we all have access to information and I think it's easy for the audience to plug in. They can find us on social media like comment, share, follow our content, and I think that's a great way to plug in. If they want to learn more, they can also go to our website, www.charitablepharmacy.org. they can explore more there but also sign up for our newsletter. And that's a way to get regular content straight to their inbox discussing some of the things we're grappling with for our patients and helping heal this community.

Right. I like newsletters more so than social media because often when you're looking for something on social media, it just gets buried in your feed and you never get to that information that you need.

So.

So if somebody calls, is there information that you send to them or is it all just available on the website and you kind of guide them that way?

Anybody with questions could call us. Most of my team is focused on helping the patients that are qualified and receiving care at the pharmacy. But if somebody's got a question, we'll always do our best to help answer that or point them in the right direction.

Right? Right.

Are there plans for future programs or services from the charitable pharmacy? Plus maybe give an audience an overview of how their donations to the charitable pharmacy can make the health of our community stronger too. We talked about the physical donation of unused, that sort of thing. But obviously you must be open to dollar donations to help out as well.

Absolutely, Brett. We are a nonprofit. We are funded through the goodness that is philanthropy. And so we invite donations. Someone can go to our website, click on the donate button and make a one time gift or set up a recurring monthly contribution. Something as low as $25 a month gives someone access to a rescue inhaler. As I think about our future, we're reaching our arms wider. We see that needs are growing and have been trending up these last several years.

And so our goal is to increase capacity to be able to serve 50% more patients. We know there's going to be need and we want to be ready to serve those people in our community who need our care and give them a hand up towards better health. But more than medicine, I think it's also continuing to build partnerships that solve the tough problems that are around these social drivers of health. Carol, you mentioned housing. We talked about food. This community is made tremendous strides thinking about transportation and how we connect. I hope that charitable pharmacy can be at the table in the discussion and thinking thoughtfully about solutions that are of value to our patients, that give them that fighting chance towards better health. That is the future.

And what I think our mission is right, rightly positioned to do.

Well, when you're saying you're going to. You hope to increase the number of people served by 50%. That just barely covers all of us who. All of us baby boomers who are aging rapidly. And that's going to be your huge audience.

It is. We do have an older patient base and this world is getting expensive. So many of our older adults have been hardworking, planned for retirement and the world's gotten more expensive than they were prepared for. And unfortunately, medicine can be very expensive. Most of us don't plan to be ill, we don't plan for that emergency. But we want the best medicines and cost sometimes gets in the way. And I think that's where charitable pharmacy is positioned to be a solution. And we want to be able to serve patients.

It's part of why we raised the income threshold and serve up to three times the federal poverty level of folks. And so that includes many of our older adults on fixed incomes. If someone's struggling, I want them to give us a call. If we're not the right solution for them, we'll do our best to point them in the right direction and help give them a hand up. But I want to be that solution for I want Charitable Pharmacy to be that solution for all of our community and neighbors who need help affording medicine.

A couple of other things that I wanna make sure we hit for our audience before we end today's podcast. One is that we've not really talked about your location and how patients work with you at that location, or if there are other locations or other methods of receiving the medication. But also we always ask our guests your last words of wisdom. So let's roll that all in together and give us kind of that overview of what you want to make sure that our audience walks away with in terms of information from you today. And any information that we do talk about, we will make sure the resources are in our show notes.

Charitable Pharmacy is located in downtown Columbus. We're housed inside the Livingston Avenue United Methodist Chur. And so we invite our patients to come to us. If somebody wanted to learn more today, they could go online to our website. They're going to set up an appointment to have a first visit with us. That's a telephone call to get started, but then we're going to arrange a time for them to come down and get all of their medicine and they're coming downtown to our location in the church for care. We think it's very important that our care model be infused with education and time sitting down with the pharmacist. And so that's the primary reason we invite patients to come to us and we'll help overcome the transportation challenges if needed.

We're located downtown in the Livingston United Methodist Church and we're asking patients to come on site to get their medicine. But if somebody wanted to learn more, they could go online to charitablepharmacy.org and they're going to schedule their first visit appointment with us there to qualify. And it's an easy application process, but we want to clear that so that the time when they do come down to the pharmacy can be focused on them getting their medicine and having education with our pharmacists as they start on a new health journey with us guiding and supporting them. You asked if I have any last words of wisdom, and I think I would share that. October is going to be American Pharmacist Month. I would encourage the audience to get to know your local community pharmacist, ask them questions and ask for their advice as you navigate your health and the health challenges of your family members. Community pharmacists are maybe the most trusted and most accessible health care provider. They're unsung heroes in our communities but rich with knowledge.

And so I want the audience to know the value of their pharmacist, that the conversation about pharmacy is more than medicine and they should make their pharmacist a resource to them.

Well, many thanks to Our expert guest Dr. Taylor Reid, executive director of the Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio for joining us today and listener, thank you for joining us. You're going to find the contact information and the resources as we discussed in the show notes available on our website@lookingforwardourway.com and all the podcast platforms that platform you're listening to us to right now. And we're looking forward to hearing your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes.