Third-year PharmD student Kellie Ogimachi is the first recipient of a new fellowship from the biopharmaceutical company AbbVie Inc., which will support her pursuit of a dual PharmD–MS degree in Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy at USC Mann.
It’s a new direction for her—one she couldn’t have predicted as a child growing up in Northridge, on the northern end of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.
Always an animal lover, she had originally set her sights on becoming a veterinarian.
She enrolled in Cal Poly University San Luis Obispo with that goal firmly in mind, declared a major in animal science and worked at a VCA Animal Hospital as a kennel assistant.
Then, as she got more exposure to the field, she started to think more about pharmacy as a profession. She tested the waters by working as a pharmacy technician at Rite Aid.
In fall 2023, she enrolled at the Mann School intending to specialize in veterinary pharmacy.
As she progressed through the program, her focus broadened. She began working 18 to 20 hours per week as a pharmacy intern at Kaiser Permanente while getting involved in a number of organizations including the Industry Pharmacists Organization and the Student National Pharmaceutical Association, where she served as director of chronic kidney disease awareness. She received the USC Mann Merit Scholarship, as well as the Cohen Endowed Scholarship.
Then she took an elective course, Biopharmaceutical Marketing Management (BPMK 500) with Associate Professor John Stofko, an expert in biopharmaceutical research and development who has held leadership positions at Biogen, Kite Pharma/Gilead, Caremark/Baxter and startup organizations.
The experience proved pivotal.
Working in teams of four, students were assigned a disease state and challenged to collaborate to create and present a new product profile for a drug in that category. “That played to my strengths in problem solving and analysis,” she says.
So when representatives from AbbVie came to campus last year to introduce the new fellowship, Ogimachi decided to apply. She was selected from nearly a dozen candidates.
“Kellie was up for the quantitative rigor of the master’s program,” says William Padula, USC Mann associate professor of pharmaceutical and health economics, who helped select Ogimachi for the fellowship. “She was prepared for the delayed gratification of a couple more years of education to make her career path more nuanced.”
As a master’s student, Ogimachi will study such principles as supply and demand, and how preference measures lead to value. These concepts help drug makers better understand the value for money in pharmaceuticals, Padula notes. “If we charge $100K on a drug, will it cure someone’s cancer or make someone’s life easier who has rheumatoid arthritis?” he asks. Given high drug prices, he adds, “we all have to ask that question.”
Ultimately, of course it’s the insurance companies that have to address such questions, Padula explains—and companies like AbbVie that must demonstrate value. The dual PharmD–MS, Padula says, empowers students such as Ogimachi “to carry out that type of a calculation using real-world evidence so higher-value decisions can be made that lead to better patient outcomes.”
As a fellow, Ogimachi will take one extra class for her master’s each term. After her final year of the PharmD degree, she’ll do one more full year of coursework for the master’s, followed by a yearlong onsite fellowship at AbbVie. In addition to fully funding her master’s degree, the company will provide a stipend to cover living expenses.
“What this program aims to do is train students for a career in health outcomes research, which is very different than a career in pharmacy,” says Vaishali Patel, PharmD ’02, MS ’04, senior director of Health Economics and Outcomes Research and therapeutic area head of Aesthetics & Regenerative Medicine at AbbVie. Patel was part of the team of USC faculty and AbbVie executives who selected Ogimachi for the fellowship.
By the time Ogimachi completes her fellowship four years from now, she will be able to research a particular product and analyze how those results fit into the product value—skills preparing her to launch her professional career, Patel notes.
For her part, Ogimachi is eager to learn more about the possibilities in industry and, thanks to the AbbVie fellowship, she looks forward to a career that will allow her to work to improve patients’ access to innovative medical treatments and strengthen healthcare outcomes on a broader scale. She credits the faculty and alumni of USC for opening her eyes to a career path she hadn’t envisioned before.
“This is a great opportunity,” she says. “I want to learn more how I can be useful, helping to improve the current medications that are on the market.”