Melvin F. Baron, PharmD, who has been a full-time faculty member at the USC School of Pharmacy since 1990, has been promoted from associate to full professor.
Melvin F. Baron, PharmD
Baron first joined the USC faculty on a part-time basis in 1981, while operating a home health care center he founded in 1957 after earning a doctor of pharmacy degree at USC.
A revered instructor, Baron serves as director of the first-level externship program, which he helped create. He is also co-director of the PharmD/MBA Program, is responsible for teaching clerkships in Pharmacy Administration and is faculty adviser to Phi Lambda Sigma.
Deeply involved in the local community, Baron serves as a consulting pharmacist for several clinics that serve indigent patients in Los Angeles County. He was the first faculty member to identify medication-related quality and safety gaps in safety net clinics, which led to the school’s largest-ever grant — $12 million, in 2012, from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He is renowned for developing a series of popular fotonovelas, or comic book-style pamphlets in Spanish, to educate the Latino population about common chronic diseases and public health concerns.
Baron is a member of the California Safety Net Alliance Pharmacy & Therapeutics Committee, a fellow of the California Pharmacists Association and the American College of Apothecaries, and president of PharmaCom, a pharmaceutical communications company.
Among numerous honors, in 2008 he was named Pharmacist of the Year by the California Pharmacists Association.
“Few faculty can match his passion for providing an excellent educational experience for our Doctor of Pharmacy students,” said an announcement to faculty from Steven Chen, PharmD, chair of the Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy and the William A. Heeres and Josephine A. Heeres Endowed Chair in Community Pharmacy. “He has always been a popular faculty member, leader and mentor. His enthusiasm and commitment to USC and the profession is without compare.”
— Michele Keller