Carter, ’78 BSPh, PharmD, has been named the recipient of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy’s (ACCP) Paul F. Parker Medal—the professional society’s highest honor. He also received a Regents Award for Faculty Excellence from the Iowa Board of Regents earlier this fall.

Carter is the Patrick E. Keefe Professor in the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science (PPS). He is also a professor in the UI Department of Family Medicine in the Roy J. And Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.

“Dr. Carter is an elite leader, researcher, mentor and advocate in our profession,” said Dennis Helling, PharmD, an executive director emeritus at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, and Carter’s nominator for the ACCP award. “He is a research genius for our profession and a tireless champion for ACCP and clinical pharmacy. His work is pioneering and unparalleled.”

Carter’s work focuses on health care strategies involving clinical pharmacists. He is the force behind innovative practice models that get pharmacists and physicians working more closely together to treat and control their patients’ chronic diseases, especially high blood pressure. He is an internationally-recognized expert on hypertension and team-based care.

His work goes well beyond collaboration. Carter was the first to show a scientific link between two factors that are now the “most highly cited cause of diuretic-induced new onset diabetes”, said Jerry Bauman, PharmD, dean and professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy. The discovery changed best practices for treating such patients: including changes to national treatment guidelines.

“He is one of the very best pharmacist scientists in our profession,” Bauman said.

He “has not only influenced the world of pharmacy practice, but has had a much broader impact within the health care community. His research is recognized as the very best, not only in pharmacy practice, but within the highly competitive research world of hypertension, added Paul James, MD, former, longtime chair of the UI Department of Family Medicine and co-chair of JNC-8 Panel on Hypertension.

The level of financial support that Carter has received for clinical pharmacy-focused research—in particular from the National Institutes for Health (NIH)—is extremely high: even “unprecedented”, according to one nominator. "Carter has arguably been the most successful community-based researcher the profession has witnessed to date," said Donald Letendre, PharmD, dean and professor at the UI College of Pharmacy.

That financial support is the fuel that has enabled Carter and his team members to further the progress of the profession. Through publishing research results in scientific journals and reaching out in other ways, Carter has forged new paths for fellow health care providers and researchers to follow. His CV includes 64 successfully-funded research proposals, more than 350 publications, and 300 national and international presentations.

“No one in the pharmacy profession has produced more seminal research in the area of evidence-based treatment of hypertension than Dr. Carter,” Helling said.

Carter is “among the most elite pharmacy researchers ever,” Letendre added. “And he has arguably been the most successful community-based researcher the profession has witnessed to date.”

He has also held longtime leadership roles in national pharmacy organizations, colleges of pharmacy and within high-profile federal organizations. Carter has led or coauthored 13 national committee reports from various federal, scientific and professional organizations.

He was a pioneer in the establishment of board certification for clinical pharmacists, and created the first versions of the professional development modules used for the most popular certification type: Board Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist (BCPS). “Many more than … 10,000 pharmacists have certified and/or recertified via the modules. Carter was a key author of these and other of our profession’s leading therapeutic textbooks in clinical pharmacy and Family Medicine,” Helling said.

“Dr. Carter’s love of ACCP and his selfless leadership in developing, nurturing, and creating excellence in the PSAP book series may be the single most important contribution, made by any individual, to the advancement of clinical pharmacy,” Helling wrote.

University of Florida professor and UF College of Pharmacy associate dean John Gums, PharmD, stated: “Dr. Carter’s work in physician-pharmacist collaborative care models most certainly fulfills the definition that Dr. Parker saw in the 1960’s when he called for pharmacists to be an integral member of the healthcare team.”

“I can think of no other active clinical pharmacist who has made a more meaningful contribution to the profession of pharmacy than Dr. Carter.”