Sharlea Leatherwood is President and CEO of Valley Prescription Services, Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri. Valley Prescription Services consists of two pharmacies with specialty services in long term care, compounding, nutritional and herbal products and traditional prescription dispensing. Sharlea is also involved in pharmacy consulting for long term care facilities and by appointment for ambulatory patients. She provides smoking cessation programs, hormone replacement seminars and private sessions, bone density screenings, immunizations, and nutrition and wellness seminars.

Ms. Leatherwood is the Immediate past President of the National Community Pharmacists Association representing the nation’s community pharmacists, including the owners of nearly 24,000 pharmacies.

Sharlea has served as an officer in NCPA since 1989 as she served from 5th Vice President upward and was elected to the NCPA Executive Committee in 1996. She served as Chairman of the Executive Committee for two years. She was a founding board member of the National Institute for Pharmacist Care Outcomes and served as its chair from 1997 to 2001.

Ms. Leatherwood is a Director for the Pharmacist Mutual Insurance Companies. She also serves as an adjunct professor for the University of Missouri at Kansas City College of Pharmacy. She is currently the Secretary for the Missouri Pharmacy Foundation. She is a member of the American College of Apothecaries, American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, UMKC School of Pharmacy Foundation Board, National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, and the UMKC Alumni Association. Sharlea has also served as the Chair of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy Collaborative Practice Task Force. She has also served on the American College of Pharmacy Education Pharm.D. Curriculum Revision Committee.

Sharlea is a founding executive board member of Community Care Rx which oversees a successful Medicare discount card program and was founded to develop a new paradigm in pharmacy benefit design.

Ms. Leatherwood graduated with honors from the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 1981 with a degree in pharmacy. She is licensed in Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas and holds an honorary license for the state of Oklahoma. She is a NIPCO Diplomat certified in Diabetes Care, Cardiovascular Care, and Asthma Care. Sharlea is married and has four children.

About the lecture

"Community Pharmacy and PBMs – Present and Future"

This presentation will focus on the unethical practices of the pharmacy benefit managers and their impact on independent community pharmacy today. Practices such as inflated AWP billing, NDC manipulation and unfair coercion to BOM owned mail order facilities have had a major impact on independent pharmacy practice. The National Community Pharmacy Association’s targeted plan of education, litigation, legislation and solutions to the current BPM controlled marketplace will be presented.

Quoted from the 2005 Linda H. and Calvin J. Anthony Lecture Announcement Brochure