Steven Huynh is the 2021 winner of the Guy Genest Passion for Pharmacy Award
Steven Huynh is a people person.
It’s this interest in helping people that made him realize that a career in biochemistry research wasn’t for him. He spent his undergraduate co-ops in academic and industrial research labs, and though the work was interesting, Steven felt like he was missing something. A connection with others. The ability to see impact in real-time.
Now in this third year of pharmacy school, Steven is an accomplished student leader and the 2021 recipient of the Guy Genest Passion for Pharmacy Award at Waterloo Pharmacy. This award is bestowed by the Canadian Foundation of Pharmacy, and it recognizes one outstanding student leader from each of Canada’s pharmacy schools each year.
Steven’s leadership spans many fields, from organizing pan-Canada events as the Athletics Rep on the Society of Pharmacy Students (SOPHs), to designing a virtual conference in collaboration with CAPSI National, to research and impactful work terms, to administering flu/COVID shots and conducting vaccine education. It was this desire to support and learn from others that drove him to pursue these opportunities.
“The opportunity to meet different people and learn from their perspectives is what inspires me,” Steven says. “Through my club involvement, I’ve connected with many other students and professionals, worked on projects together, and eventually developed strong friendships.”
For a social and engaged student leader like Steven, the pandemic hit hard when it required many activities to be cancelled or shifted online. In his SOPhS role, and as the Senior Competitions Coordinator with the Canadian Society of Pharmacy Students and Interns (CAPSI), Steven found creative solutions to encourage engagement while also adhering to public health guidelines.
Collecting Kilometers from Coast-to-Coast is an example of this. Steven leveraged existing connections and made new ones to reach out to all of Canada’s pharmacy schools. The event idea was inspired by a similar challenge he’d seen from McMaster University’s Competitive Ultimate Frisbee team, a team in which he played for three years during his undergrad, and by recent pharmacy school lectures on cardiology.
Collecting KMs from Coast-to-Coast leaderboards. The rankings by school are on the left; the top rankings by individuals are on the right.
“In mini-cases and on work terms, pharmacy students are always recommending 150 daily minutes of exercise,” he says. “I thought about that – how many pharmacy students understood what that really felt like? Collecting KMs from Coast-to-Coast was born from that idea.”
The challenge inspired students to reflect on what that amount of exercise looked like by encouraging them to do it themselves and track it. Students from seven participating pharmacy schools signed up to log their kilometers over three weeks in fall 2021. Awards were given for a variety of milestones, and each individual raised money for a charity of their choice. Steven and the other reps from the schools tallied the kilometers submitted by the initiative’s 110 participants. Collectively, the group raised over $1,200 for charity over a 3-week period.
“We designed the challenge to be as inclusive as possible, providing participants with the choice of walking, biking or running,” Steven says. “It was a huge success, and we hope to expand on it next year to engage even more students.”
Steven has also taken on the role of a lead planner for the digital Bridging the Gaps conference scheduled for early January 2022. This conference is intended to be a replacement for the Professional Development Week (PDW) conference, which annually invites participants from coast to coast to learn together. It was originally supposed to be in person and hosted by the University of Toronto, but COVID resulted in cancellation.
When CAPSI put out the call for organizers for a digital conference instead, Steven volunteered, and working with other students, they identified a theme of uncommon paths and topics in pharmacy and have reached out to speakers from various fields to support the event.
“I was so excited for PDW in person and disappointed when it was cancelled,” he says. “I knew that I could play a role in ensuring that pharmacy students still get a chance to participate in this unique event.”
While holding all these roles, Steven has also supported vaccination efforts, working in High Park Pharmacy in Toronto and Rexall Pharmacy in Kitchener as a vaccinator. He’s taken the job one step further, providing vaccine education to friends and family with an educational presentation he created with his brother Kevin as part of CAPSI’s Advice for Life Competition.
“I know in my own family, some of whom are new immigrants to Canada, there were lots of questions about the vaccines,” he said. “I felt like I could play a role here – Kevin and I had created this presentation, and we shared it with them, and they in turn shared the facts with my aunts and uncles, creating this sort of chain effect. It’s been so rewarding to be able to be a resource to my friends and family throughout this pandemic and using my familiarity with the healthcare system to help them book vaccine appointments.”
For Steven, that rewarding feeling continues to fuel his passion for pharmacy.
“I’ve been able to see firsthand the impact the knowledge I’ve gained from school has on my communities,” he says. “Coming from an immigrant family where there are sometimes reasons not to trust the health-care system, I’ve been a source of unbiased and informed facts. Training to become a pharmacist has allowed me to do that – it’s such a flexible education, where we learn about a wide range of topics, and I very much enjoy sharing that knowledge.”