Chinenye Anyanwu, ’09, Pharm.D., M.P.H. has joined the UConn School of Pharmacy as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Pharmacy Practice in the area of public health. Anyanwu brings over a decade of practical expertise developing and implementing community-oriented chronic disease prevention and health promotion programs in the non-profit, private, and public sectors.
Prior to her arrival at UConn, Anyanwu supported the District of Columbia Department of Health COVID-19 pandemic response efforts in vulnerable and hard-to-reach communities and coordinated its Comprehensive Cancer Control program. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, she served as an Engagement Officer with the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), where she advanced patient and stakeholder engagement in the organization’s research portfolio through assessing, disseminating, and facilitating patient/stakeholder engagement practices in clinical research. She has also worked for The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease, a patient support and advocacy organization, developing and evaluating patient education tools for heart disease survivors running local support groups in their communities.
Anyanwu’s research interests center on how systemic racism shapes health disparities, and more specifically on how utilizing community-based participatory research approaches can improve the provision of pharmaceutical care through community-based interventions, policy, and advocacy. She is also interested in how culture and health interact, such as how culture can mediate health behaviors and vice versa. Her call to serve disadvantaged communities and confront health disparities developed as a pharmacy student at UConn through participation in the Student National Pharmaceutical Association (SNPhA) and the Urban Service Track Program (UST). She remained engaged in health disparities work throughout her years as a community pharmacist by volunteering for non-profit organizations like the African Womens Cancer Awareness Association and by joining professional organizations like the National Pharmaceutical Association and Pharmacy Initiative Leaders.
As a pharmacist, researcher, and public health professional, Anyanwu understands the challenges people in underserved communities encounter when seeking access to quality care. She remains committed to helping communities reach their greatest health potential by creating equitable, sustainable, changes in healthcare training and delivery.
Anyanwu earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the UConn School of Pharmacy (2009), and a subsequent Master of Public Health degree specialized in community-oriented primary care from the George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health. She later completed a postdoctoral fellowship focused on patient-centered outcomes and comparative effectiveness research methods at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Pharmacy.
