By Mary Kate Brogan

 When Catrina “Nina” Chatman first learned about the role of pharmacists in organ transplant, she thought back to her childhood friend, Elisabeth, who lost her battle with cystic fibrosis after sustaining an infection following her lung transplant in 2010.

“I was very young then; I was 19, and being exposed to that, obviously, it’s very heartbreaking,” Chatman said, “but when I think back, it’s also amazing that somebody had that opportunity – her in getting a transplant to help with this condition she’d grown up with and the donor for making an impact on her life and giving the gift of life by choosing to be an organ donor.”

Years later, Chatman, now a fourth-year Pharm.D. student at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy, has been recognized at the national level for the impact she’s made in organ donation advocacy.

This summer, the American Society of Transplantation honored Chatman with the AST Transplant Pharmacy Community of Practice Organ Donation Challenge award for Best Overall Project, earning the highest score in the country among pharmacy students who submitted entries and a grant from Veloxis Pharmaceuticals to sustain advocacy efforts in the years ahead.

Chatman teamed on her project, “Students for Life: Building a Legacy of Hope,” with Fadel Dadabaev, Pharm.D., a solid organ transplant pharmacy resident at VCU Health. The project brought together faculty, specialized clinicians, transplant recipients and multiple student organizations to champion organ donation education and advocacy.

“This massive undertaking – to empower our community with knowledge, compassion and action by raising awareness about the life-saving impact of organ donation – has thrived on strong institutional and peer support,” Chatman said. “This project focused on educating our peers and the community and inspiring individuals to register as donors. Through advocacy, outreach and creative engagement, we aimed to create and seek to sustain a lasting legacy, because every person has the power to make an impact.”

VCU pharmacy student sparked by a desire to serve others

Chatman came to VCU School of Pharmacy in 2023, the next step in a career that has included stints in the military, in labs and in hospitals across several states. When Chatman lost her friend at age 19, she was active-duty military, which at the time affected her eligibility to be an organ donor. In an effort to honor her friend’s memory, she donated blood and platelets whenever she could.

Over the years, the desire to serve others that had steered Chatman in her military career propelled her in a new direction: healthcare. Following her military service, she took classes at the University of Maryland Global Campus while working as a lab assistant at a hospital in southwest Oklahoma. After earning her B.S. in biotechnology in 2021, she joined the hematology team at the same hospital as a medical technologist for two years before moving to Richmond for pharmacy school.

During her second year at VCU, Chatman took the Solid Organ Transplantation Elective taught by Nicole Omecene, Pharm.D. The course “illuminated the vital role pharmacists play in the transplant ecosystem,” Chatman said. “Through this elective, I learned firsthand about these critical care spaces and had the privilege to meet VCU's Transplant Pharmacy Team, as well as a transplant recipient who shared her story.”

Prompted by the class, Chatman shadowed Idris Yakubu, Pharm.D., a VCU Health Hume-Lee Transplant Center pharmacist, who inspired her to turn her clinical understanding of transplantation into advocacy, and connected with Dadabaev, who supported Chatman as she began her advocacy and went on to serve as her mentor for the “Students for Life” project.

The initiative featured community and campus events, including:

• An interactive organ donation panel to discuss the critical, lifelong realities of patient care and medication adherence.
• A partnership with VCU’s chapter of the Student National Pharmaceutical Association to develop, “Project Keepsake,” which bridged kidney disease awareness with transplantation education.
• A partnership with VCU’s chapter of Christian Pharmacists Fellowship International, to co-lead an organ donor memorial walk.
• A specialized tour of the United Network for Organ Sharing headquarters in Richmond, where students met with the organization’s principal biostatistician, Wida Cherikh, Ph.D., to discuss the Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network, how the network’s data impacts transplant medication adherence and the critical role specialty pharmacies play in long-term outcomes.

Opening doors through education

Chatman is working with Sevgi Shahbazi, the president of the Student National Pharmaceutical Association chapter at VCU, to establish a permanent organ transplant chair within the chapter to sustain the momentum of the past year. She hopes that educational tabling, clinical panels, UNOS tours and memorial walks become annual traditions at VCU. Future plans include driving closer recruitment from the transplant elective curriculum and expanding collaborations with the undergraduate Student Organ Donation Advocates chapter.

As Chatman looks ahead to the next chapter in her own career, she sees a future in hospital pharmacy, whether that’s in hematology-oncology, neurology, transplantation – her top three areas of interest – or the places where those specialties come together.

The last few years of pharmacy school have put things in perspective for Chatman, helping her remember to prioritize what’s important in her life, opening her eyes to career paths she’d never considered and encouraging her to look at the bigger picture for each patient, including the preventive care that could help reduce the need for organ transplantation for patients and the care that can help them live longer lives altogether – both of which pharmacists are well equipped to provide.

“For preventable conditions that may result in the need for transplantation down the line, what you do now matters, even from a young age,” Chatman said. “I think about my daughter, who just turned 15, and students her age and how we can educate them early. If we can educate people, that’s going to impact their lives for sure, and it can open doors.

“And for patients waiting for a transplant today, you don’t want a patient to decline while they’re waiting and then no longer be eligible for a transplant. That’s where pharmacists can play a huge role, too, in making sure that patients are adhering to their medications and maintaining the function they still have in their organs. There’s a lot of difference we can make as pharmacists.”

Stay informed, stay healthy. Sign up for VCU Health’s e-mail newsletter.