Pharmacy professor receives national honor for work related to prescription drug abuse

JOHNSON CITY Dr. Sarah Melton, a professor of pharmacy practice in the Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy at East Tennessee State University, has been awarded a national honor for her work related to prescription drug abuse.

The American Pharmacists Association (APhA) recently honored Melton with the Generation Rx Award of Excellence, an award that recognizes a pharmacist who has demonstrated a commitment to the mission of substance abuse education. 

In receiving the honor, Melton was recognized for her 20 years of dedication to fighting the prescription drug abuse and opioid addiction epidemic in Appalachia.

An advocate for reducing stigma and promoting evidence-based treatment, Melton cares for patients receiving medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorders.

Melton spearheaded a partnership between the Tennessee Department of Health and ETSUs colleges of Pharmacy and Public Health to train health care providers in naloxone rescue, a life-saving nasal spray medication used to reverse the effect of opioid overdoses. In addition to training more than 500 health care providers, she has trained more than 1,500 citizens in naloxone rescue in Virginia alone.

Melton is chair of OneCare of Southwest Virginia, a substance abuse collaborative that has provided free training to more than 3,000 health care providers on prescription drug abuse-related issues. She was twice appointed to the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth and has chaired the Education Workgroup in Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffes Task Force on Heroin and Prescription Drug Abuse.

Both the Tennessee and Virginia pharmacists associations previously recognized Melton with their Generation Rx awards.

Dr. Melton is very deserving of this award, said Dr. Debbie Byrd, dean of the Gatton College of Pharmacy. I am so proud of her hard work and efforts to be an agent of change in the Appalachian region in reversing the epidemic of prescription drug abuse deaths.

On May 8, Melton continued those efforts by leading an opioid overdose town hall, at the request of Gov. McAuliffe, at the Community Center in Abingdon, Virginia. There, Melton joined McAuliffe on stage to discuss the latest legislation regarding opioids and the impact of the epidemic on southwest Virginia.