Peter Gal Selected as Helms Award Recipient

Peter Gal, PharmD, has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Richard A. Helms Award for Excellence in Pediatric Pharmacy Practice. The Helms Award will be given at the 17th Annual Pediatric Pharmacy Conference and PPAG Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland on Saturday, October 4, 2008.

 

Peter Gal is currently Director, Graduate Pharmacy Education Division, Greensboro Area Health Education Center. He received his BS in Pharmacy from St. John’s University in New York (1975), and his Pharm.D. from the State University of New York at Buffalo (1977).

 

He served as Assistant Professor on the faculty at Mercer University in Atlanta, Georgia from 1977-1979. In 1979, he became AHEC Pharmacist in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was subsequently appointed Clinical Associate Professor (1983), and Clinical Professor (1989) at UNC School of Pharmacy. He began practicing in Neonatal Pharmacotherapy in 1977, and continued this practice at Moses Cone Health System in 1979. He also created the Neonatal Pharmacology Research Laboratory at Moses Cone Hospital in 1983, and created and directs the Neonatology Pharmacotherapy Fellowship at Women’s Hospital (Moses Cone Health System) since 1992.

 

Other clinical practice experiences include: Clinical Pharmacist for Family Practice Teaching Service 1979-1995; Polypharmacy Clinic in Family Practice Teaching Service 1993-1995; Guilford County Department of Public Health asthma and seizure clinics 1982-1988; and Asthma Clinic at Rockingham County Health Department 1996-present.

 

Honors received include the Clinical Practice Award from ACCP in 1990, Fellow of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy and American Society of Health System Pharmacy, and Member of the Pharmacotherapy Specialty Council, Board of Pharmaceutical Specialties, American Pharmaceutical Association 1989-1993. Primary research activities include: neonatal pharmacotherapy, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics.

 

Previous Helms Award Recipients are:

2006: Dr. Richard Helms, Chair of Clinical Pharmacy, The University of Tennessee

2007: Dr. Robert Poole, Director of Pharmacy, Lucille Packard Children's Hospital

 

The Pediatric Pharmacy Advocacy Group (PPAG) is an international professional pharmacy association representing pediatric pharmacists and their patients. PPAG id dedicated to improving medication therapy for all children.