10/17/2023
Where there is a healthcare need, Amy Lamb will find a way to fill it, whether that’s by advocating for pharmacy issues through her extensive board and governance experience, mentoring pharmacy owners to improve efficiencies, or working with patients to tackle underlying healthcare issues or accessibility challenges.
As CEO of Indigenous Pharmacy Professionals of Canada (IPPC), her latest mission is to better connect and support indigenous pharmacists—and ensure that indigenous communities all across Canada can access preventative, holistic and culturally appropriate health care. As a Métis woman herself, she is applying the insights gleaned from her own health journey to help remove systematic barriers preventing holistic healthcare, which she deems essential to our well-being. And based on her track record to date, Lamb will likely find new areas of focus as new healthcare needs arise. It’s just the way she operates.
After years of developing person-directed comprehensive health programs, I found myself reflecting on the foundations of health: lifestyle changes that are sustainable, affordable and motivating. I find myself reflecting on the robust healing practices found in Indigenous cultures throughout the world—practices that combine the holistic factors of health, mind, body, emotion and spirit into community-wide rituals and standards. I knew that if I was going to truly make a difference to my patients, I would need to support the mechanisms of community-based and cultural healing. Medicines are a tool used within the process of healing, and pharmacists have an important role in better connecting and empowering the holistic aspects of healing. Advocacy seems to be an important requirement for transforming healthcare, and Indigenous-led healthcare evolution means advocacy for accessible and holistic health.
As CEO of IPPC, my role is to understand the major levers that drive pharmacy practice, and the gaps and barriers facing Indigenous patients in Canada. Equally as important is gathering the perspectives of our members, the foundations of intergenerational Indigenous wisdom, and translating these concepts into the current health landscape.
I think many pharmacy colleagues feel trapped in a space and don’t have the freedom to be able to innovate within it. Both with IPPC and WillowGrove, I am continually advocating for diversity in roles and funding models so we can weave more personalized care into practice. I think our healthcare crisis is due in part to the transactional nature of funding for disease states and diagnosis, not outcomes. I encourage those who are innovators to find ways to personalize health care, which really does have the potential for incredible outcomes. And to partner with non-profits outside of health care to develop new funding streams.
If you’ve experienced burnout, you have to reform your relationship with it. The recovery makes you a stronger person. I take a moment every day to be thankful for my job and role in life. The healing journey never ends but I’m in a good spot right now and all I want to do is give that back.
