{"id":2083,"date":"2025-01-22T14:36:11","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/?p=2083"},"modified":"2025-01-27T15:07:22","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T15:07:22","slug":"she-thrives-in-variety-of-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/2025\/01\/22\/she-thrives-in-variety-of-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"She Thrives in A Variety of Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by:<\/strong> Meredith Lidard Kleeman, published in the Capsule, Winter 2025<\/p>\n

\n

Lauren Hynicka, PharmD, BCPS<\/strong><\/a>, an associate professor in the Department of Practice, Sciences, and Health Outcomes Research<\/strong><\/a>, is known around the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP) as the \u201cliver pharmacist,\u201d because she delivers all of the liver disorder lectures.<\/p>\n

But patients at the THRIVE clinic know her as the \u201cyoga pharmacist\u201d who leads free, weekly yoga classes. And students think of her as the \u201cintegrative medicine pharmacist\u201d who espouses the importance of caring for the mind, body, and spirit. Or the \u201cculinary pharmacist\u201d who leads students in nutrition discussions.<\/p>\n

The scope of Hynicka\u2019s professional activities can hardly be contained in a single title.<\/p>\n

A consummate problem-solver and dedicated educator, Hynicka is a 2024 recipient of the McGraw Hill Pathfinder Award in recognition of her work creating two innovative elective courses \u2014 Integrative Medicine and Interprofessional Culinary Health and Medicine.<\/p>\n

She was inspired to develop these courses because of her work with patients. \u201cThere are certain disease states where we only have Band-Aids. It\u2019s a lot of symptom management, it\u2019s not really fixing whatever is wrong within the disease,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

As a yoga and running enthusiast, Hynicka takes her personal health seriously and wanted to share a holistic perspective on health and well-being with her patients and students.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many chronic disease states are linked to dietary choices, but there is a really small number of hours dedicated to practical nutrition throughout all health care professional schools,\u201d she says of the courses. “I thought this would be a cool opportunity to develop something new and interprofessional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hynicka partnered with colleagues from other University of Maryland, Baltimore schools to create the culinary health and medicine course \u2014 Christopher D\u2019Adamo, PhD, an assistant professor and director of research in the Center for Integrative Medicine at the School of Medicine, and Isabelita Rambob, DDS, an assistant professor at the School of Dentistry. The one-credit elective provides comprehensive, evidence-based nutrition instruction followed by hands-on group cooking led by culinary experts.<\/p>\n

Feedback from students has been overwhelmingly positive. \u201cThey leave feeling like they have permission to think about health and wellness in creating plans for patients in a more holistic way,\u201d Hynicka says.<\/p>\n

Hynicka\u2019s path to becoming a pharmacist was heavily influenced by her family. She excelled in math and science, and was encouraged by her mother, a social worker, to consider a career in pharmacy.<\/p>\n

She admittedly didn\u2019t know much about the field until arriving at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. \u201cI learned about clinical pharmacy in my first year, and the idea of being able to take all of the information about a person and synthesize that into medication recommendations really appealed to me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Hynicka went on to complete pharmacy residencies at Virginia Commonwealth University\/Medical College of Virginia Health System. She then joined UMSOP in 2009 where she served as a clinical pharmacy specialist on a general internal medicine team at the University of Maryland Medical Center for six years.<\/p>\n

Since then, her teaching, research, and patient care activities have remained focused on patients with chronic liver disease, including chronic hepatitis C. Hynicka spearheaded the development of a hep C medication management program for the Maryland Department of Health.<\/p>\n

In addition to her research and teaching load, Hynicka works directly with patients in the THRIVE program, housed at the University of Maryland Center for Infectious Diseases, managing their hep C medication.<\/p>\n

Hynicka, who is a certified yoga instructor, wants her pharmacy students to \u201cthrive\u201d as well and is frequently invited to participate in the School\u2019s annual Last Lecture, when the graduating class nominates their favorite faculty members to send them off with life advice.<\/p>\n

The relationships Hynicka develops with students is one of the most joyful parts of her work. \u201cHaving that impact on students as they\u2019re graduating and providing them with advice on how to thrive and take things in stride is such a privilege,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The scope of Lauren Hynicka\u2019s professional activities can hardly be contained in a single title.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,1],"tags":[345,485],"class_list":["post-2083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty","category-uncategorized","tag-faculty","tag-p-shor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2083"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2092,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2083\/revisions\/2092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pharmacy.umaryland.edu\/insidesop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}